





..T* A 



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Clje JLalie CnsUsl) Classics 

Under the editorial supervision of LINDSAY TODD DAMON, A. B., 
Associate Professor of English in Brown University. 



fADDISON — The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers — Abbott 
*BURKE — Speech on Conciliation with America — Denney 

CARLYLE — Essay on Burns — Aiton 

COOPER — Last of the Mohicans — Lewis 
tCOLERlDQE— The Ancient Mariner. I . , _Mnnnv 
JLOWELL— Vision of Sir Launlal, \ ^ ^**'- Moody 

DE QUINCEY— The Flight of a Tartar Tribe-FRENCH 

DICKENS — A Tale of Two Cities — Baldwin 

DRYDEN — Palamon and Arcite — Cook 
tOEORGE ELIOT — Silas Marner — Hancock 

GOLDSMITH— The Vicar of Wakefield— Morton 

HAWTHORNE— The House of the Seven Gables— Herrick 

HAWTHORNE — Twice-Told Tales — Herrick and Bruerb 
flRVING— Life of Goldsmith— Krapp 

IRVING— The Sketch Book— Krapp 

IRVING — Tales of a Traveller and parts of The Sketch Book 
— Krapp ........ 

LOWELL— Vision of Sir Launfal— See Coleridge 
♦MACAULAY — Essays on Addison and Johnson — Newcomer 

MACAULAY — Essays on Milton and Addison — Newcomer . 

*MILTON — L' Allegro, II Penseroso» Comus, and Lycidas — 

Neilson . ...... 

MILTON — Paradise Lost, Books I and II — Farley 

POE — Poems and Tales, Selected — Newcomer 

POPE— Homer's Iliad, Books I, VI, XXII, XXIV— Cressy 
and Moody ...... 

RUSKIN — Sesame and Lilies — Linn 

SCOTT — Lay of the Last Minstrel — Moody and Willard 
tSCOTT — Lady of the Lake — Moody 

SCOTT — Marmion — Moody and Willard 
fSCOTT — Ivanhoe — Simonds .... 

SHAKSPERE— The Neilson Edition— Edited with Introduc 
tions, Notes, and Word Indexes by W. A. Neilson, Ph. D 
As You Like It, Hamlet, 'i'Julius Caesar, fiViacbeth, 
Twelfth Night— each ..... 
fSHAKSPERE- Merchant of Venice— Lovett . 

STEVENSON — Treasure Island — Broadus 

THACKERAY— Henry Esmond— Phelps 

tTENNYSON— Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and Elaine, The 
Passing of Arthur, and other Poems — Reynolds 

TENNYSON— The Princess — Copeland 

♦For Study and Practice ) College Entrance Requirements in 
tFor Reading f English, 1906, 1907, and 1908. 

Others in Preparation. 



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SCOTT, FORESHAN AND COMPANY 

Publishers, 378-388 Wabash Avenue CHICAGO 



ZTbe Xalie Enalidb Cladeice 



EDITED BY 



LINDSAY TODD DAMON, A.B. 

Associate Professor of English in Brown University 



Cfje Hafee Cngligfj Clagjiics; 



ESSAYS Al^J) ADDRESSES 



BY 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE 

BY 

BENJAMIN A. HEYDRICK 

HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERCE, 
NEW YORK CITY 



CHICAGO 
SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 

1907 



LIBRARY of OONGRESS 

Twf OeiMes Received 

PEB 20 1907 

I GLASS A XXCmNc/, 
COPY B. 






Copyright, 1906 
By SCOTT. FORESMAN AND COMPANY 



PREFACE 

I 

In preparing this book for scftool use, the editor ^ 

!i has been governed by the conviction that the best use 

ji to make of Emerson in the class-room is to quicken the; 

j pupil's own thought. To this end, a number of ques- 

I tions on the text have been placed at the end of 

each essay. These will naturally be supplemented by 

further questioning in class-room. In place of dis- 

I cussing Emerson's style fully in the Introduction, it 

has seemed preferable to study this inductively from 

the essays themselves. Questions on style and structure 

have accordingly been placed at the end of the essay 

on Compensation and other of the longer selections. 

Notes of information have been placed at the end' 

of the book. These are intended for reference rather 

than for study; they attempt to make clear certain 

passages in the text, but do not give information which 

would be found in an ordinary dictionary. 

Acknowledgments are due to the editor of the 

Centenary edition of Emerson's works for some of the 

material in the notes at the end of the book. 

B. A. H. 

New York, July, 1906, 



CONTENTS 

|! PAGE 

|l Preface 5 

i! Introduction: 

I. Biography 9 

I II. List of Works 20 

i III. Bibliography 21 

I JEssAYs AND Addresses: 

Compensation 23 

Gifts 52 

! Self-Reliance 58 

Manners 96 

Friendship 126 

Heroism 148 

Character 164 

Politics 186 

Nature 205 

Shakspeare, or the Poet 228 

The American Scholar 253 

Notes 283 



INTRODUCTION 



I. Biography 

The life of Emerson, like the lives of most American 
men of letters, has no striking or dramatic episodes. 
The son of a minister, himself a minister for a time, 
then a public lecturer, living chiefly in a quiet New 
England village, publishing a book from time to time — 
such is the story of his life. Yet when a few years ago 
a body of the most eminent men in America came to 
select names for the Hall of Fame, among all our men 
of letters Emerson was the first to be chosen. And 
Dr. Richard Garnett, late librarian of the British 
Museum, said that when Emerson died, with him de- 
parted the most shining intellectual glory and the most 
potent intellectual force of a continent. 

The son of the Reverend William Emerson and 
Ruth Haskins, Ralph Waldo Emerson was born 
May 25, 1803. His father was a minister, 
of Ancestry. ^^^ grandfather was a minister, his 
great-grandfather was a minister, and 
so on back for eight generations. Such influences 
repeated generation after generation have their effect. 
In Hawthorne's story of the Great Stone Face, where 
Emerson is pictured as Ernest, one sees the type of 
man that was produced from this long line of spiritual 
ancestry. 

9 



10 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

When Emerson was but eight years old his father 
died, leaving the mother with six children, all under ten 

years old, and no property. The father's 
Bo^h'ooL* church helped them, and so did friends, 

but it was a life of rigid economy which 
the children led. Ralph and his next brother Ed- 
ward had but one overcoat between them; they took 
turns wearing it, and heard the other boys' taunting 
question, ''Whose turn is it to wear the coat to-day?'' 
Such experiences drew the family closer together for 
companionship. How their time was spent is seen in 
a letter of Ralph's to his aunt, written at the age of ten. 

Boston, April 16, 1813. 
Dear Aunt: I am much obliged to you for your kind 
letter. I mean now to give you an account of what I 
do commonly in one day. Friday, 9th, I choose for the 
day of telling what I did. In the morning I rose, as I 
commonly do, about five minutes before six. I then help 
Wm. in making the fire, after which I set the table for 
Prayers. I then call mamma about quarter after six. 
We spell as we did before you went away. I confess I 
often feel an angry passion start in one corner of my heart 
when one of my Brothers get above me, which I think they 
sometimes do by unfair means, after which we eat our 
breakfast; then I have from about quarter after seven till 
eight to play or read. I think I am rather inclined to the 
former. I then go to school, where I hope I can say I 
study more than I did a little while ago. I am in another 
book called Virgil, and our class are even with another 
class which came to the Latin School one year before us. 
After attending the school I go to Mr. Webb's private 
school, where I write and cipher. I go to the place at 
eleven and stay till one o'clock. After this when I come 
home I eat my dinner, and at two o'clock I resume my 



INTRODUCTION 11 

I 

I studies at the Latin School, where I do the same except in 
I studying grammar. After I come home I do mamma her 
: little errands if she has any; then I bring in my wood to 
supply the breakfast room. I then have some time to play 
'l and eat my supper. After that we say our hymns or 
I chapters, and then take our turns in reading Rollin, as we 
I did before you went. We retire to bed at different times. 
j I go at a little after eight, and retire to my private devotions, 
ii and then close my eyes in sleep, and there ends the toils of 
'! the day. 

At fourteen Ralph was ready for Harvard College. 

The standard was of course not so high as at present, 

I yet a boy w^ho studied Vergil at ten was 

i Harvard. ^^ advance of most boys of his age. 

I That the family had barely enough to 

live upon never seems to have been considered a reason 

why the boys should not go to college. The eldest 

I brother had entered previously, and when Ralph was 

! ready, a place w-as found for him in the President's 

I ofBce which gave him a room rent-free; for his board 

I he waited on table. At college he was a favorite with 

! his classmates. He was poor in mathematics, but took 

I two prizes for literary work. He read much during 

I his college course, and knew Shakspere, it is said , almost 

i by heart. 

j After graduation, he and his brother William opened 

I a private school in his mother's house. It was success- 

! ful from a financial point of view, but 

School!* Emerson was not contented. Every 

night he would go to his room and write 

out his thoughts: his heart was in this, and not in his 

teaching, so after three years the school was given up. 



12 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

In the meantime Emerson had decided to enter the 
ministry, and had been studying for that purpose. 
His constant application to work had injured his health, 
and a trip to Florida was necessary. 

In 1826 Emerson received official permission to 
preach, and on Oct. 15 delivered his first sermon. In 
the meantime he had met Miss Ellen 
Minis^r! ^ Tuckcr of Concord, N. H. and become 
engaged to her. Their marriage was 
made possible by Emerson's appointment as minister 
of the Second Church of Boston, in 1829. Of Emerson 
as a preacher we have the following picture from 
Charles T. Congdon's Reminiscences of a Journalist: 

" One day there came into our pulpit [at New Bedford] 
the most gracious of mortals, with a face all benignity, who 
gave out the hymn and made the first prayer as an angel 
might have read and prayed. Our choir was a pretty good 
one, but its best was coarse and discordant after Emerson's 
voice. I remember of the sermon only that it had an 
indefinite charm of simplicity and wisdom, with occasional 
illustrations from nature, which were about the most dainty 
and delicate things of the kind which I had ever heard. I 
could understand them, if not the fresh philosophical nov- 
elties of the discourse." 

Emerson continued as pastor of the Second Church 
for three years. The occasion of his leaving it was 
characteristic of the man. He came to 
chaf'^e. **** different conclusions than his congre- 
gation on a matter of doctrine, and his 
honesty would not allow him to keep his conclusions 
to himself. One Sunday morning therefore he an- 
nounced his views from the pulpit, and resigned his 



INTRODUCTION 13 

pastorate. *'It Is my desire/' he said, ''to do nothing 
that I cannot do with my whole heart/' This was a 
painful experience to him, especially coming as it did 
soon after another sorrow. His wife's health, always 
delicate, had failed rapidly after her marriage, and 
she died in 1831. To find solace for his grief Emer- 
son undertook a voyage to Europe. 

He sailed for Italy in December, 1832. He wrote 
that he found there ''the same faces under new caps 

and jackets, another turn of the old 
Europe.**^ kalcidoscope. " He was not well pleased 

with Paris, and of Venice could say only 
^'It is a great oddity, a city for beavers, but to my 
thought a most disagreeable residence. I soon had 
enough of it. " But in England he regained his interest 
in life. He met Carlyle, and called that day "a white 
day in my years"; he also met Coleridge and Words- 
worth. 

He returned to Boston in October, 1833. He made 
no effort to secure another church, though he was often 

asked to fill pulpits in Boston or other 

Cecomes a i t)j.i T_**j.i2J 

Lecturer. placcs. But he was begmnmg to hnd a 

wider audience than his congregation — 
that of the lyceum. At this time there was a general 
demand for public lectures of a serious nature. The 
lyceum movement was somewhat like the university 
extension movement of our day, but much more wide- 
spread. Every city, and nearly every town, had its 
lecture course, and men like Wendell Phillips found in 
the lyceum platform a means of arousing the public 
mind to vital questions. Emerson's first lectures were 



14 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

on scientific subjects; he gave a course in Boston 
on natural history, geology, chemistry, and physics. 
Later he chose biography: Milton, Luther, Fox, and 
Burke were his subjects. Then followed a course on 
English literature. But gradually his subjects became 
more and more general; his lectures dealt less with the 
laws of science and more with the laws of the moral 
universe. Compensation, Friendship, Spiritual Law^s, 
Heroism, Love, — these were the subjects upon w^hich 
he spoke, to the charm of audiences wherever he went. 
His personality was attractive. He was tall, slender, 
and slightly stooped, with a finely-modelled brow and 
deep-set eyes of intense blue, a firm but sensitive mouth, 
and an expression in which enthusiasm and shrewd- 
ness were mingled. His voice was unusually musical. 
His lecturing is thus described by George William 
Curtis: 

*' A simplicity of manner that could be called rustic if 
it were not of a shy, scholarly elegance; perfect com- 
posure, clear, clean crisp sentences, maxims as full of glitter- 
ing truth as a winter night of stars; an incessant spray of 
fme fancies like the November shower of meteors, and the 
same intellectual and moral exaltation, expansion and 
aspiration, were the characteristics of all his lectures." 

While at Plymouth, Mass., Emerson became engaged 
to Miss Lydia Jackson, whom he married in 1835. 
Marria e ^hcy made their home in Concord, a 

and Life at village near Boston, famous as the spot 
Concord. where the first patriot volley was fired 

in the Revolution. This was to be Emerson's home 
for the remainder of his life. He found friends and 



INTRODUCTION 17 

His method of composition was unique. When he 

had expressed a thought to his liking — and he sought 

long for the right words — ^he wrote it 

^^1*^*1^5^-' down in a note-book. Good sentences 

Composition. 

found in his reading he also copied 
here. When he had a lecture to prepare, he went to 
these note-books, which were indexed, hunted up all 
that he had ^vTitten on the subject, and adding whatever 
else suggested itself, put it all down, with little or no 
effort to connect the ideas, or to give the whole a logical 
plan. As a result, his essays are often difficult reading. 
Sentences as transparent and beautiful as a crystal are 
followed by others that one must puzzle over for long, 
and perhaps fail to understand even then. In reading 
him, then, one must not be discouraged if he finds 
passages that he does not understand : there are enough 
that everyone can understand to repay the reader richly. 
Almost every paragraph has a sentence worth remember- 
ing; on almost every page one finds familiar subjects 
treated in a new light; there is no writer in our litera- 
ture more stimulating to thought. 

In 1841 appeared the first series of the Essays. It 
contained twelve essays, including ''Compensation,'' 

" Self -Reliance,'' ''Friendship" and 
to^Engiand. '' Hcroism." This book met with a 

much wider public than his earlier 
volume; it was reprinted in England with an intro- 
duction by Carlyle, and made Emerson's name known 
abroad. As a result of this he was invited in 1847 to y/ 
come to England to lecture. He went hesitatingly, 
but found friends everywhere, and had all the lecture 



18 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

engagements that he could fill. He met all the literary 
notables of the day, including De Quincey, Wordsworth, 
Macaulay, Dickens, Thackeray, Disraeli, and Tennyson. 
Members of Parliament and of the aristocracy sought 
his company as an honor. His impressions of the coun- 
try were published later under the title English Traits 
(1856). Of this book Dr. Garnett said that it should 
endure as long as the solid foundations of English life, 
and should be a mirror for England to consult from 
time to time. 

After Emerson's return to America he took an increas- 
ing interest in the abolitionist movement, as it was then 

called. The passage of the Fugitive 
s^ver^!^ °^ Slave Law aroused him to the very depths 

of his nature. In an address at Con- 
cord in 1851 he said ''The Act of Congress of Sept. 18, 
1850, is a law which every one of you will break on the 
earliest occasion, — a law^ which no man can obey or 
abet the obeying without loss of self-respect and the 
forfeiture of the name of a gentleman. "" It took cour- 
age to say such things in that day. On one occasion 
he w^as speaking at Cambridge and was hissed down by 
the mob. His attitude on this question caused the 
loss of some lecture engagements, a loss which he could 
ill afford, but he made no attempt to conceal his senti- 
ments. In 1856 he said: ''I think we must get rid of 
slavery or we must get rid of freedom.'' He was 
invited to speak at a meeting of the Massachusetts 
Anti-Slavery Society in 1861. What took place is 
told in his own words: ''I went, and though I had no- 
thing to say, showed myself. If I were dumb, yet I 



, 



INTRODUCTION TEt 

would have gone, and mowed, or muttered or madle: 
signs. The mob roared whenever I attempted tc^ 
speak, and after several beginnings I withdrew/' 

To encourage young men to enlist, he wrote the poenn 
''Voluntaries," one stanza of which is often quoted:. 

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 

So near is God to man, 
When Duty whispers low, Thou musty 

The youth replies, / can. 

After 1866 Emerson wrote but little that was nev^r^ 
He continued to lecture in Boston, at Harvard College^^ 
^ and widely through the country. But 

^Later years. the constant travel and strain of lecturing 
told upon him. After 1870 he began tc^ 
show signs of failing powders. In 1872 his house took 
fire, and was destroyed. The exposure at this time 
weakened him, and a number of his friends quietly 
contributed a sum of money to rebuild his house and 
give him a trip to Europe. He went to Italy, Egj^t, 
France and England. As before, he was honored 
with the friendship of the great, meeting in France 
Renan and Taine, in England Gladstone, Robert 
Browning and Ruskin, besides his old friend Carlyle^ 
Upon his return to America, his arrival at Concord 
was the occasion of a public demonstration such as has 
seldom been given to a private individual. It is thus 
described by Mr. Cabot: 

'^He reached home in May, and was received at the 
station in Concord by a general gathering of his townspeople, 
who had arranged that the approach of the steamer should. 



20 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

be notified by the peal of the church bells, which tolled out 
the hour when he would come. The whole town assembled, 
down to the babies in their wagons, and as the train emerged 
from the Walden woods, the engine sent forth a note of 
triumph, which was echoed by the cheers of the assemblage. 
Emerson appeared, surprised and touched, on the platform, 
and was escorted with music between two rows of smiling 
school children to his house, where a triumphal arch of 
leaves and flowers had been erected. Emerson went to the 
gate and spoke his thanks to the crowd, and then returned 
to make a delighted progress through the house, which had 
been restored under the careful supervision of the architect, 
the study unchanged, with its books and manuscripts, 
and his pictures and keepsakes in their wonted array." 

After his return he lectured occasionally until 1881, 
but wrote nothing more; it was evident that his strength 

was failing, though his spirit was as cheer- 
Death, ful as always. In 1882 he contracted 

pneumonia, causing his death April 27. 
He was buried in the village graveyard at Concord; 
the place is marked by a boulder of New England 
granite, in its simple outline and in its strength as of 
the hills a fit sMnbol of the man. 



II. List of Chief Works 

Nature 1836 

Essays (First Series) 1841 

Essays (Second Series) 1844 

Poems 1847 

Miscellanies 1849 

Representative Men 1850 



EMERSON'S ESSAYS 21 

English Traits 1856 

Conduct of Life 1860 

May-Day (Poems) 1867 

Society and Solitude 1870 

Parnassus (Edited by Emerson) 1875 

Letters and Social Aims"^ 1876 

Lectures and Biographical Sketches'^ 1883 

Natural History of Intellect^ 1893 



III. Bibliography 

Emerson's complete works are published in twelve 
volumes, the Riverside edition, by Houghton, Mifl3in & 
Co. They also publish the Centenary edition, in 
twelve volumes, with notes by his son, Edward W. 
Emerson. The Essays, Representative Men and Nature 
may be obtained in various inexpensive editions issued 
by other publishers. 

The standard biography of Emerson is the Memoir, 
by James E. Cabot, in two volumes (Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co.). Other good biographies are the lAfe, 
by O. W. Holmes in the American Men of Letters 
Series, and the Life, by Richard Garnett in the English 
Writers Series. A finely sympathetic sketch of Emer- 
son as a lecturer is given in LowelFs My Study Windows, 

Critical essays on Emerson are numerous. Among 
the best are Matthew Arnold's, in his Discourses in 
America; John Jay Chapman, in Emerson and other 
Essays; E. C. Stedman in Poets of America; E. P. 

*Prepared for publication by Mr. Cabot, his literary executor. 



22 INTRODUCTION 

Whipple in American Literature^ and John Burroughs 
in Indoor Studies. Numerous critical extracts are 
given in C. W. Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism 
and in J. Scott Clarke's Study of English Prose Writers. 
The latter volume also contains a full bibliography of 
critical articles. 



ESSAYS AI^D ADDRESSES 

BY EMERSON 



COMPENSATION. 

[1] Ever since I was a boy I have wished to write a 
discourse on Compensation; for it seemed to me when 
very young that on this subject life was ahead of 
theology and the people knew more than the preachers 
taught. The documents too from which the doctrine 
is to be drawn, charmed my fancy by their endless 
variety, and lay always before me, even in sleep; for 
they are the tools in our hands, the bread in our basket, 
the transactions of the street, the farm and the dwelling- 
house; the greetings, the relations, the debts and credits, 
the influence of character, the nature and endowment 
of all men. It seemed to me also that in it might be 
shown men a ray of divinity, the present action of the 
Soul of this world, clean from all vestige of tradition; 
and so the heart of man might be bathed by an inunda- 
tion of eternal love, conversing with that which he 
knows was always and always must be, because it really 
is now. It appeared moreover that if this doctrine 
could be stated in terms with any resemblance to those 
bright intuitions in which this truth is sometimes re- 
vealed to us, it would be a star in many dark hours and 

23 



24 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

crooked passages in our journey, that would not suffer 
us to lose our way. 

[2] I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing 
a sermon at church. The preacher, a man esteemed 
for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary manner 
the doctrine of the Last Judgment. He assumed 
that judgment is not executed in this world; that the 
wicked are successful; that the good are miserable; 
and then urged from reason and from Scripture a 
compensation to be made to both parties in the next 
life. No offence appeared to be taken by the congrega- 
tion at this doctrine. As far as I could observe when 
the meeting broke up they separated without remark 
on the sermon. 

[3] Yet what was the import of this teaching? What 
did the preacher mean by saying that the good are 
miserable in the present life? Was it that houses 
and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are 
had by unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor 
and despised; and that a compensation is to be made 
to these last hereafter, by giving them the like grati- 
fications another day, — bank-stock and doubloons, 
venison and champagne? This must be the com- 
pensation intended; for what else? Is it that they 
are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and 
serve men? Why, that they can do now. The 
legitimate inference the disciple would draw was, *We 
are to have such a good time as the sinners have now' ; 
— or, to push it to its extreme import, — 'You sin now, 
we shall sin by-and-by; we would sin now, if we could; 
not being successful we expect our revenge tomorrow.' 



COMPENSATION 25 

[4] The fallacy lay in the immense concession that 
the bad are successful; that justice is not done now. 
The blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring 
to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes 
a manly success, instead of confronting and convicting 
the world from the truth; announcing the Presence of 
the Soul; the omnipotence of the Will; and so establish- 
ing the standard of good and ill, of success and false- 
hood, and summoning the dead to its present tribunal. 

[5] I find a similar base tone in the popular religious 
works of the day, and the same doctrines assumed by 
the literary men when occasionally they treat the related 
topics. I think that our popular theology has gained 
in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions 
it has displaced. But men are better than this theology. 
Their daily life gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and 
aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind him in his own 
experience, and all men feel sometimes the falsehood 
which they cannot demonstrate. For men are wiser 
than they know. That which they hear in schools and 
pulpits without afterthought, if said in conversation 
would probably be questioned in silence. If a man 
dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the 
divine laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys 
well enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the 
hearer, but his incapacity to make his own statement. 

[6] I shall attempt in this and the following chapter 
to record some facts that indicate the path of the law 
of Compensation; happy beyond my expectation if I 
shall truly draw the smallest arc of this circle. 

[7] Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in 



26 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

every part of nature; in darkness and light, in heat 
and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and 
female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants 
and animals; in the systole and diastole of the heart; 
in the undulations of fluids and of sound ; in the centrif- 
ugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, 
and chemical affinity. Superinduce magnetism at one 
end of a needle, the opposite magnetism takes place 
at the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels. 
To empty here, you must condense there. An in- 
evitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a 
half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; 
as, spirit, matter; man, woman; subjective, objective; 
in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay. 

[8] Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of 
its parts. The entire system of things gets represented 
in every particle. There is somewhat that resembles 
the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and 
woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel of 
corn, in each individual of every animal tribe. The 
reaction, so grand in the elements, is repeated 
within these small boundaries. For example, in the 
animal kingdom the physiologist has observed that no 
creatures are favorites, but a certain compensation 
balances every gift and every defect. A surplusage 
given to one part is paid out of a reduction from another 
part of the same creature. If the head and neck 
are enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short. 

[9] The theory of the mechanic forces is another ex- 
ample. What we gain in power is lost in time, and 
the converse. The periodic or compensating errors 



COMPENSATION 27 

of the planets is another instance. The influences 
of climate and soil in political history are another. 
The cold climate invigorates. The barren soil does 
not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers, or scorpions. 

[10] The same dualism underlies the nature and 
condition of man. Every excess co-uses a defect ; every 
defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every 
evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of 
pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It 
is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every 
grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For every thing 
you have missed, you have gained something else; and 
for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches 
increase, they are increased that use them. If the 
gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out of the man 
what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills 
the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. 
The waves of the sea do not more speedily seek a level 
from their loftiest tossing than the varieties of condition 
tend to equalize themselves. There is always some 
levelling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, 
the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the 
same ground with all others. Is a man too strong and 
fierce for society, and by temper and position a bad 
citizen, — a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate 
in him? — nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and 
daughters who are getting along in the dame's classes 
at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths 
his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to 
intenerate the granite and felspar, takes the boar out 
and puts the lamb in and keeps her balance true. 



28 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

[11] The farmer imagines power and place are fine 
things. But the President has paid dear for his White 
House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and 
the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a 
short time so conspicuous an appearance before the 
world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters 
w^ho stand erect behind the throne. Or do men desire 
the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius? 
Neither has this an immunity. He who by force of 
will or of thought is great and overlooks thousands, 
has the responsibility of overlooking. With every 
influx of light comes new danger. Has he light? he 
must bear witness to the light, and always outrun that 
sympathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, by 
his fidelity to new revelations of the incessant soul. 
He must hate father and mother, wife and child. 
Has he all that the world loves and admires and covets? 
— ^he must cast behind him their admiration and afflict 
them by faithfulness to his truth and become a byword 
and a hissing. 

[12] This Law writes the laws of the cities and nations. 
It will not be baulked of its end in the smallest iota. 
It is in vain to build or plot or combine against it. 
Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Res nolunt 
diu male administrari. Though no checks to a new 
evil appear, the checks exist, and will appear. If 
the government is cruel, the governor's life is not safe. 
If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If 
you make a criminal code sanguinary, juries will not 
convict. Nothing arbitrary, nothing artificial can 
endure. The true life and satisfactions of man seem 



COMPENSATION 29 

to elude the utmost rigors or felicities of condition and 
to establish themselves with great indifferency under 
all varieties of circumstance. Under all governments 
the influence of character remains the same, — in Turkey 
and New England about alike. Under the primeval 
despots of Egypt, history honestly confesses that man 
must have been as free as culture could make him. 

[13] These appearances indicate the fact that the uni- 
verse is represented in every one of its particles. Every 
thing in nature contains all the powers of nature. 
Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the natu- 
ralist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and 
regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming 
man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. 
Each new form repeats not only the main character 
of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, 
furtherances, hindrances, energies and whole system 
of every other. Every occupation, trade, art, trans- 
action, is a compend of the world and a correlative of 
everv other. Each one is an entire emblem of human 
life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course 
and its end. And each one must somehow accom- 
modate the whole man and recite all his destiny. 

[14] The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The 
microscope cannot find the animalcule which is less 
perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, 
motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduc- 
tion that take hold on eternity, — all find room to 
consist in the small creature. So do we put our life 
into every act. The true doctrine of omnipresence 
is that God reappears with all his parts in every moss 



30 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

and cobweb. The value of the universe contrives to 
throw itself into every point. If the good is there, 
so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, 
so the limitation. 

[15] Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. 
That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside 
of us is a law. We feel its inspirations; out there in 
history we can see its fatal strength. It is almighty. 
All nature feels its grasp. *^It is in the world, and the 
world was made by it.^' It is eternal but it enacts 
itself in time and space. Justice is not postponed. 
A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. 
Oc Kv/Sot Atos ael (.virLirTovai. The dice of God are 
always loaded. The world looks like a multiplica- 
tion-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn 
it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure 
you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns 
to you. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, 
every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence 
and certainty. What we call retribution is the uni- 
versal necessity by which the whole appears wherever 
a part appears. If you see smoke, there must be fire. 
If you see a hand or a limb, you know that the trunk 
to which it belongs is there behind. 

[16] Every act rewards itself, or in other words 
integrates itself, in a twofold manner: first in the thing, 
or in real nature; and secondly in the circumstance, 
or in apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the 
retribution. The casual retribution is in the thing 
and is seen by the soul. The retribution in the cir- 
cumstance is seen by the understanding; it is insep- 



COMPENSATION 31 

arable from the thing, but is often spread over a long 
time and so does not become distinct until after many 
years. The specific stripes may follow late after the 
offence, but they follow because they accompany it. 
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punish- 
ment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the 
flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and 
effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be 
severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the 
end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed. 

[17] Whilst thus the world will be whole and refuses 
to be disparted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, 
to appropriate; for example, — ^to gratify the senses 
we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs of 
the character. The ingenuity of man has been dedi- 
cated to the solution of one problem, — -how to detach 
the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual 
bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, 
the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off 
this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; 
to get a one end, without an other end. The soul says, 
Eat; the body would feast. The soul says. The man 
and woman shall be one flesh and one soul; the body 
would join the flesh only. The soul says. Have do- 
minion over all things to the ends of virtue; the body 
would have the power over things to its own ends. 

[18] The soul strives amain to live and work through 
all things. It would be the only fact. All things shall 
be added unto it, — 'power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty. 
The particular man aims to be somebody; to set up 
for himself; to truck and higgle for a private good; 



32 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

and, in particulars, to ride that he may ride; to dress 
that he may be dressed; to eat that he may eat; and to 
govern, that he may be seen. Men seek to be great; 
they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. 
They think that to be great is to get only one side 
of nature, — the sweet, without the other side, — -the 
bitter. 

[19] Steadily is this dividing and detaching counter- 
acted. Up to this day it must be ow^ned no projector 
has had the smallest success. The parted water re- 
unites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of 
pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, powxr 
out of strong things, the moment we seek to separate 
them from the whole. We can no more halve things 
and get the sensual good, by itself, than w^e can get 
an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without 
a shadow. ^^Drive out nature with a fork, she comes 
running back." 

[20] Life invests itself w^ith inevitable conditions, 
which the unwise seek to dodge, w^hich one and another 
brags that he does not know, brags that they do not 
touch him; — but the brag is on his lips, the conditions 
are in his soul. If he escapes them in one part they 
attack him in another more vital part. If he has 
escaped them in. form and in the appearance, it is 
because he has resisted his life and fled from himself, 
and the retribution is so much death. So signal is 
the failure of all attempts to make this separation 
of the good from the tax, that the experiment w^ould 
not be tried, — ^since to try it is to be mad, — ^but for 
the circumstance that when the disease began in the 



COMPENSATION 33 

will, of rebellion and separation, the intellect is at 
once infected, so that the man ceases to see God 
whole in each object, but is able to see the sensual 
allurement of an object and not see the sensual hurt; 
he sees the mermaid's head but not the dragon's tail, 
and thinks he can cut off that which he would have 
from that which he would not have. ''How secret 
art thou who dwellest in the highest heavens in silence, 
O thou only great God, sprinkling with an unwearied 
providence certain penal blindnesses upon such as 
have unbridled desires!" 

[21] The human soul is true to these facts in the 
painting of fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of con- 
versation. It finds a tongue in literature unawares. 
Thus the Greeks called Jupiter, Supreme Mind; but 
having traditionally ascribed to him many base actions, 
they involuntarily made amends to Reason by tying 
up the hands of so bad a god. He is made as helpless 
as a kino; of Endand. Prometheus knows one secret 
which Jove must bargain for; Minerva, another. He 
cannot get his own thunders; Minerva keeps the key 
of them : 

Of all the gods, I only know the keys 

That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 

His thunders sleep. 

A plain confession of the in- working of the All and of 
its moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the 
same ethics; and indeed it would seem impossible for 
any fable to be invented and get any currency which 
was not moral, Aurora forirot to ask youth for her 



34 EMERSOX'S ESSAYS 

lover, and so though Tithonus is immortal, he is old. 
Achilles is not quite invulnerable; for Thetis held him 
bv the heel T\'hen she dipped him in the Styx and the 
sacred waters did not wash that part. Siegfried, in 
the Xibelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell 
on his back whilst he was bathino; in the Draojon's 
blood , and that spot which it covered is mortal. And so 
it always is. There is a crack in every thing God has 
made. Always it would seem there is this vindictive 
circumstance stealing in at unawares even into the 
wild poesy in which the human fancy attempted to 
make bold holiday and to shake itself free of the old 
laws, — this back-stroke, this kick of the gun, certify- 
ing that the law is fatal; that in nature nothing can 
be given, all things are sold. 

[22] This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who 
keeps watch in the Universe and lets no offence go 
unchastised. The Furies they said are attendants 
on Justice, and if the sun in heaven should transgress 
his path they would punish him. The poets related 
that stone walls and iron swords and leathern thongs 
had an occult svinpathy with the v\Tongs of their owners; 
that the belt which Ajax gave Hector dragged the 
Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of 
Achilles, and the sword which Hector gave Ajax was 
that on whose point Ajax fell. They recorded that 
when the Thasians erected a statue to Theogenes, a 
victor in the games, one of his rivals went to it by night 
and endeavored to throw it down by repeated blows, 
until at last he moved it from its pedestal and was 
crushed to death beneath its fall. 



COMPENSATION 35 

[23] This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. 
It came from thought above the will of the writer. 
That is the best part of each writer which has nothing 
private in it; that is the best part of each which he 
does not know; that which flowed out of his constitution 
and not from his too active invention; that which in 
the study of a single artist you might not easily find, but 
in the study of many you would abstract as the spirit 
of them all. Phidias it is not, but the work of man 
in that early Hellenic world that 1 would know. The 
name and circumstance of Phidias, however convenient 
for history, embarrasses when we come to the highest 
criticism. We are to see that which man was tending 
to do in a given period, and was hindered, or, if you 
will, modified in doing, by the interfering volitions of 
Phidias, of Dante, of Shakspeare, the organ whereby 
man at the moment wrought. 

[24] Still more striking is the expression of this fact 
in the proverbs of all nations, which are always the 
literature of Reason, or the statements of an abso- 
lute truth without qualification. Proverbs, like the 
sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of 
the Intuitions. That which the droning world, chained 
to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his 
own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs without 
contradiction. And this law" of laws, which the pulpit, 
the senate and the college deny, is hourly preached 
in all markets and all languages by flights of proverbs, 
whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as that 
of birds and flies. 

[25] All things are double, one against another. — - 



36 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Tit for tat; an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; 
blood for blood; measure for measure; love for love. — ■ 
Give, and it shall be given you. — He that watereth 
shall be watered himself. — What will you have? quoth 
God ; pay for it and take it. — -Nothing venture, nothing 
have. — 'Thou shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast 
done, no more, no less. — 'Who doth not work shall not 
eat. — 'Harm watch, harm catch. — Curses always recoil 
on the head of him A\'ho imprecates them. — ^If you put 
a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens 
itself around your own. — Bad counsel confounds the 
adviser. — ^The devil is an ass. 

[26] It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our 
action is overmastered and characterized above our 
will by the law of nature. We aim at a petty end 
quite aside from the public good, but our act arranges 
itself by irresistible magnetism in a line with the poles 
of the world. 

[27] A man cannot speak but he judges himself. 
With his will or against his will he draws his portrait 
to the eye of his companions by every word. Every 
opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a thread- 
ball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains in 
the thrower's bag. Or, rather, it is a harpoon thrown 
at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a coil of cord in the 
boat, and, if the harpoon is not good, or not well throv\'n, 
it will go nigh to cut the steersman in twain or to sink 
the boat. 

[28] You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. 
''No man had ever a point of pride that was not in- 
jurious to him," said Burke. The exclusive in fashion- 



COMPENSATION 37 

able life does not see that he excludes himself from 
enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it. The exclu- 
sionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door 
of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out others. 
Treat men as pawns and ninepins and you shall suffei 
as well as they. If you leave out their heart, you shall 
lose youT own. The senses would make things of all 
persons; of women, of children, of the poor. The vul- 
gar proverb, ''I will get it from his purse or get it from 
his skin,'' is sound philosophy. 

[29] All infractions of love and equity in our social 
relations are speedily punished. They are punished 
by Fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations to my 
fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. 
We meet as water meets water, or as two currents of 
air mix, with perfect diffusion and interpenetration of 
nature. But as soon as there is any departure from 
simplicity and attempt at halfness, or good for me that 
is not good for him, my neighbor feels the wrong; he 
shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from him; 
his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; 
there is hate in him and fear in me. 

[30] All the old abuses in society, the great and 
universal and the petty and particular, all unjust ac- 
cumulations of property and power, are avenged in 
the same manner. Fear is an instructor of great 
sagacity and the herald of all revolutions. One thing 
he always teaches, that there is rottenness where he 
appears. He is a carrion crow, and though you see 
not well what he hovers for, there is death somewhere. 
Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our cultivated 



38 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded and mowed 
and gibbered over government and property. That 
obscene bird is not there for nothing. He indicates 
great wrongs which must be revised. 

[31] Of the Hke nature is that expectation of change 
which instantly follows the suspension of our volun- 
tary activity. The terror of cloudless noon, the 
emerald of Polycrates, the awe of prosperity, the in- 
stinct which leads every generous soul to impose on 
itself tasks of a noble asceticism and vicarious virtue, 
are the tremblings of the balance of justice through the 
heart and mind of man. 

[32] Experienced men of the world know very well 
that it is best to pay scot and lot as they go along, and 
that a man often pays dear for a small frugality. The 
borrower runs in his own debt. Has a man gained 
any thing who has received a hundred favors and 
rendered none? Has he gained by borrowing, through 
indolence or cunning, his neighbor's wares, or horses, 
or money? There arises on the deed the instant acknowl- 
edgment of benefit on the one part and of debt on 
the other; that is, of superiority and inferiority. The 
transaction remains in the memory of himself and his 
neighbor; and every new transaction alters according 
to its nature their relation to each other. He may 
soon come to see that he had better have broken his 
own bones than to have ridden in his neighbor's coach, 
and that **the highest price he can pay for a thing is 
to ask for it.'' 

[33] A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts 
of life, and know that it is always the part of prudence 



COMPENSATION 39 

to face every claimant and pay every just demand on 
your time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay; 
for first or last you must pay your entire debt. Per- 
sons and events may stand for a time between you and 
justice, but it is only a postponement. You must 
pay at last your own debt. If you are wise you will 
dread a prosperity which only loads you with more. 
Benefit is the end of nature. But for every benefit 
which you receive, a tax is levied. He is great who 
confers the most benefits. He is base, — ^and that is 
the one base thing in the universe, — to receive favors 
and render none. In the order of nature we cannot 
render benefits to those from whom we receive them, 
or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be 
rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for 
cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good staying 
in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. 
Pay it away quickly in some sort. 

[34] Labor is watched over by the same pitiless 
laws. Cheapest, says the prudent, is the dearest labor. 
What we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, 
is some application of good sense to a common want. 
It is best to pay in your land a skilful gardener, or to 
buy good sense applied to gardening; in your sailor, 
good sense applied to navigation; in the house, good 
sense applied to cooking, sewing, serving; in your agent, 
good sense applied to accounts and affairs. So do you 
multiply your presence, or spread yourself throughout 
your estate. But because of the dual constitution of 
things, in labor as in life there can be no cheating. 
The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles 



40 EMERSON^ S ESSAYS 

himself. For the real price of labor is knowledge 
and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These 
signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or 
stolen, but that w^hich they represent, namely, knowl- 
edge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen. 
These ends of labor cannot be answered but by real 
exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure motives. 
The cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, cannot extort 
the benefit, cannot extort the knowledge of material 
and moral nature which his honest care and pains yield 
to the operative. The law of nature is. Do the thing, 
and you shall have the power; but they w^ho do not 
the thing have not the power. 

[35] Human labor, through all its forms, from the 
sharpening of a stake to the construction of a city or 
an epic, is one immense illustration of the perfect com- 
pensation of the universe. Everywhere and always 
this law is sublime. The absolute balance of Give 
and Take, the doctrine that every thing has its price, 
and if that price is not paid, not that thing but some- 
thing else is obtained, and that it is impossible to get 
anything without its price, is not less sublime in the 
columns of a ledger than in the budgets of states, in 
the laws of light and darkness, in all the action and 
reaction of nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws 
which each man sees ever implicated in those processes 
with which he is conversant, the stern ethics which 
sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are measured out 
by his plumb and foot-rule, which stand as mani- 
fest in the footing of the shop-bill as in the history 
of a state, — do recommend to him his trade, and 



COMPENSATION 41 

though seldom named, exalt his business to his imag- 
ination. 

[36] The league between virtue and nature engages 
all things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beau- 
tiful laws and substances oi the world persecute and 
whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged 
for truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide 
world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the 
earth is made of glass. There is no such thing as 
concealment. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a 
coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the 
woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel 
and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you 
cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw up 
the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. Always 
some damning circumstance transpires. The laws and 
substances of nature, w^ater, snow, wind gravitation, 
become penalties to the thief. 

[37] On the other hand the law holds with equal 
sureness for all right action. Love, and you shall be 
loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as 
the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good man 
has absolute good, which like fire turns every thing 
to its own nature, so that you cannot do him any harm; 
but as the royal armies sent against Napoleon, when 
he approached cast down their colors and from enemies 
became friends, so do disasters of all kinds, as sickness, 
offence, poverty, prove benefactors. 

Winds blow and waters roll 
Strength to the brave and power and deity, 
Yet in themselves are nothing:. 



42 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

[38] The good are befriended even by weakness and 
defect. As no man had ever a point of pride that was 
not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that 
was not somewhere made useful to him. The stag 
in the fable admired his horns and blamed his feet, 
but when the hunter came, his feet saved him, and 
afterwards, caught in the thicket, his horns destroyed 
him. Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his 
faults. As no man thoroughly understands a truth 
until first he has contended against it, so no man has 
a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances or talents 
of men until he has suffered from the one and seen 
the triumph of the other over his own want of the same. 
Has he a defect of temper that unfits him to live in 
society? Thereby he is driven to entertain himself 
alone and acquire habits of self-help; and thus, like 
the wounded oyster, he mends his shell with pearl. 

[39] Our strength grows out of our weakness. Not 
until we are pricked and stung and sorely shot at, 
awakens the indignation which arms itself with secret 
forces. A great man is always willing to be little. 
Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes 
to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, 
he has a chance to learn something; he has been put 
on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; 
learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; 
has got moderation and real skill. The wise man 
always throws himself on the side of his assailants. 
It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak 
point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him 
like a dead skin and when they would triumph, lo! 



COMPENSATION 43 

he has passed on invulnerable. Blame is safer than 
praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As 
long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain 
assurance of success. But as soon as honied words 
of praise are spoken for me I feel as one that lies un- 
protected before his enemies. In general, every evil 
to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As the 
Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor 
of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain 
the strength of the temptation we resist. 

[40] The same guards which protect us from disaster, 
defect and enmity, defend us, if we will, from self- 
ishness and fraud. Bolts and bars are not the best 
of our institutions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark 
of wisdom. Men suffer all their life long under the 
foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But 
it is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one 
but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the 
same time. There is a third silent party to all our 
bargains. The nature and soul of things takes on 
itself the guaranty of the fulfilment of every contract, 
so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you 
serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put 
God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. 
The longer the payment is withholden, the better for 
you; for compound interest on compound interest is 
the rate and usage of this exchequer. 

[41] The history of persecution is a history of en- 
deavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, 
to tw^ist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether 
the actors be many or one, a tvrant or a mob. A mob 



44 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves 
of reason and traversing its work. The mob is man 
voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. 
Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane, 
like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; 
it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, 
by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and per- 
sons of those who have these. It resembles the prank 
of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy 
aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit 
turns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr 
cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue 
of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every 
burned book or house enlightens the world; every 
suppressed or expunged word reverberates through 
the earth from side to side. The minds of men are 
at last aroused; reason looks out and justifies her own 
and malice finds all her work in vain. It is the whipper 
who is whipped and the tyrant who is undone. 

[42] Thus do all things preach the indifferency of 
circumstances. The man is all. Ever^/thing has two 
sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has its 
tax. I learn to be content. But the doctrine of com- 
pensation is not the doctrine of indifferency. The 
thoughtless say, on hearing these representations, — 
What boots it to do well? there is one event to good 
and evil; if I gain any good I must pay for it; if I 
lose any good I gain some other; all actions are indif- 
ferent. 

[43] There is a deeper fact in the soul than compen- 
sation, to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a com- 




COMPENSATION 45 



pensation, but a life. The soul is. Under all this 
running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and 
flow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss 
of real Being. Existence, or God, is not a relation 
or a part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirma- 
tive, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallow- 
ing up all relations, parts and times within itself. 
Nature, truth, virtue, are the influx from thence. 
Vice is the absence or departure of the same. Noth- 
ing, Falsehood, may indeed stand as the great Night 
or shade on which as a back-ground the living uni- 
verse paints itself forth; but no fact is begotten by it; 
it cannot work, for it is not. It cannot work any good ; 
it cannot work any harm. It is hai-m inasmuch as 
it is worse not to be than to be. 

[44] We feel defrauded of the retribution due to 
evil acts, because the criminal adheres to his vice and 
contumacy and does not come to a crisis or judgment 
anywhere in visible nature. There is no stunning 
confutation of his nonsense before men and angels. 
Has he therefore outwitted the law? Inasmuch as 
he carries the malignity and the lie with him he so 
far decreases from nature. In some manner there 
will be a demonstration of the wrong to the under- 
standing also; but, should we not see it, this deadly 
deduction makes square the eternal account. 

[45] Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that 
the gain of rectitude must be bought by any loss. 
There is no penalty to virtue; no penalty to wisdom; 
they are proper additions of being. In a virtuous 
action I properly am; in a virtuous act I add to the 



46 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

world; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos 
and Nothing and see the darkness receding on the 
limits of the horizon. There can be no excess to 
love, none to knowledge, none to beauty, w^hen these 
attributes are considered in the purest sense. The 
soul refuses all limits. It affirms in man always an 
Optimism, never a Pessimism. 

[46] His life is a progress, and not a station. His 
instinct is trust. Our instinct uses ^'more^' and '^less" 
in application to man, always of the presence of the soul, 
and not of its absence; the brave man is greater than 
the coward; the true, the benevolent, the wise, is more 
a man and not less, than the fool and knave. There 
is therefore no tax on the good of virtue, for that is the 
incoming of God himself, or absolute existence, without 
any comparative. All external good has its tax, and 
if it came without desert or sweat, has no root in me,, 
and the next wind will blow it away. But all the good 
of nature is the soul's, and may be had if paid for in 
nature's lawful coin, that is, by labor which the heart 
and the head allow. I no longer wish to meet a good 
I do not earn, for example to find a pot of buried gold, 
knowing that it brings with it new responsibility. 
I do not wash more external goods, — >neither posses- 
sions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The 
gain is apparent; the tax is certain. But there is no 
tax on the knowledge that the compensation exists 
and that it is not desirable to dig up treasure. Herein 
I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I contract the 
boundaries of possible mischief. I learn the wisdom 
of St. Bernard, ''Nothins; can work me damage ex- 



COMPENSATION 47 

cept myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about 
with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own 
fault." 

[47] In the nature of the soul is the compensation 
for the inequalities of condition. The radical tragedy* 
of nature seems to be the distinction of More and 
Less. How can Less not feel the pain; how not feel 
indignation or malevolence towards More? Look at 
those who have less faculty, and one feels sad and 
knows not well what to make of it. Almost he shuns 
their eye; he fears they will upbraid God. What 
should they do? It seems a great injustice. But 
see the facts nearly and these mountainous inequalities 
vanish. Love reduces them as the sun melts the ice- 
bero; in the sea. The heart and soul of all men being: 
one, this bitterness of His and Mine ceases. His is 
mine. I am my brother and my brother is me. If I 
feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbors, 
1 can get love; I can still receive; and he that loveth 
maketh his own the grandeur he loves. Thereby I 
make the discovery that my brother is my guardian, 
acting for me with the friendliest designs, and the 
estate I so admired and envied is my own. It is the 
eternal nature of the soul to appropriate and make all 
things its own. Jesus and Shakspeare are fragments 
of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them 
in my own conscious domain. His virtue, — ^is not that 
mine? His wit, — if it cannot be made mine, it is not 
wit. 

[48] Such also is the natural history of calamity. 
The changes which break up at short intervals the pros- 



48 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

perity of men are advertisements of a nature whose 
law is growih. Evermore it is the order of nature to 
grow, and every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quit- 
ting its whole system of things, its friends and home and 
laws and faith, as the shellfish crawls out of its beautiful 
but stony case, because it no longer admits of its growth, 
and slovdy forms a new house. In proportion to the 
vigor of the individual these revolutions are frequent, 
until in some happier mind they are incessant and all 
worldly relations hang very loosely about him, becoming 
as it were a transparent fluid membrane through which 
the living form is always seen, and not, as in most 
men, an indurated heterogeneous fabric of many dates 
and of no settled character, in which the man is im- 
prisoned. Then there can be enlargement, and the 
man of to-day scarcely recognizes the man of yesterday. 
And such should be the outward biography of man in 
time, a putting off of dead circumstances day by day, 
as he renews his raiment day by day. But to us, in 
our lapsed estate, resting, not advancing, resisting, 
not cooperating with the divine expansion, this growih 
comes by shocks. 

[49] We cannot part with our friends. We cannot 
let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out 
that archangels may come in. We are idolaters of 
the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul, 
in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not 
believe there is any force in to-day to rival or re-create 
that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the ruins of 
the old tent where once we had bread and shelter 
and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover, 



COMPENSATION 49 

and nerve us again. We cannot again find aught so 
dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep in 
vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, 'Up and on- 
ward f orevermore ! ' We cannot stay amid the ruins. 
Neither will we rely on the New; and so we walk ever 
with reverted eyes, like those monsters who look back- 
wards. 

[50] x\nd yet the compensations of calamity are made 
apparent to the understanding also, after long inter- 
vals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappoint- 
ment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the 
moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure 
years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies 
all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, 
lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat 
later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it 
commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, ter- 
minates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was wait- 
ing to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a 
household, or style of living, and allows the formation 
of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. 
It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaint- 
ances and the reception of new influences that prove 
of the first importance to the next years; and the man 
or woman who would have remained a sunny garden- 
flower, with no room for its roots and too much sun- 
shine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the 
neglect of the gardener is made the banian of the 
forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods 
of men. 



50 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

QUESTIONS 
(Numbers refer to pages and paragraphs.) 

23:2. What was the preacher's doctrine? Is it generally held? 

25:4. What is Emerson's belief? Note that Emerson looks at the 
question not from the standpoint of the world, but from a spiritual 
standpoint. 

26:8. What sentence in this paragraph sums up the thought of 
the paragraph as a whole? 

27: 10. Illustrate the statement that for everything you gain, you 
lose something. Explain the figure in the last sentence. 

28 : 11 . How does the President pay dear for his White House? Does 
a mayor or governor ever pay dear for his place? From what book 
does Emerson quote in the last sentence? 

29 : 13. In what sense is a horse a running man, a fish a swimming 
man? 

30: 16. Select a sentence for quotation from this paragraph. 

33:21. "As helpless as a king of England." How is he helpless? 
What law is illustrated by the stories of Jove, of Achilles, and of 
Siegfried? 

36:27. Note how Emerson makes a statement and then repeats it 
in a figurative way. What is gained by this? 

36:28. Illustrate the first sentence. Do the members of a school 
society or clique lose anything? 

37:30. "Property is timid." Explain. 

39 : 33. Select the quotable sentences from this paragraph. How 
are taxes levied on benefits received? Does a boy educated in a 
public high school owe anything? To whom? 

39 : 34. Why is cheap labor dear in the end? 

41 : 36. Find examples in this paragraph of Emerson's figurative 
statement of a truth. 

42 : 39. Note the compression, the vigor, the epigrammatic quahty 
of this paragraph. 

43: 41. Why is persecution like trjing to make water run up hill? 
At the time this was written (1841), what popular question often 
provoked mob violence? What examples of mob violence do we 
have to-day? 

45: 45. What are the exceptions to the law of Compensation? 

47: 47. *' Jesus and Shakspere are fragments of the soul." Explain 
this. How do we "appropriate" Shakspere? How may we "appro- 
priate" Jesus? 

48:48. What is Emerson's view of calamity? Do you agree? 

New knowledge may be either facts or truths. Dates in history 
are facts; the law that action is equal to reaction is a truth. There 
are truths of science, of art, of law, of human nature, of morals, 



COMPENSATION 51 

and of religion : there are also facts in all these. Does Emerson deal 
with facts or truths, and on which of the subjects just mentioned? 

Which of the following qualities of style do you think characteristic 
of Emerson: humor, earnestness, pathos, exaggeration, ideahsm, 
irony, clearness, obscurity, sincerity, prejudice, originality? 

Emerson names the gratifications of the rich ; bank stock and doub- 
loons, venison and champagne. He might have said: wealth and 
luxurious living. Why did he choose the other words? This use of 
specific instead of general words is characteristic of Emerson's style. 
Find other examples in paragraph 10, and elsewhere. 

Emerson makes frequent use of figures of speech to illustrate his 
meaning. Find examples in paragraphs 10, 16, 20, and 30. 



GIFTS. 

Gifts of one who loved me, — 
'Twas high time they came; 
When he ceased to love me, 
Time they stopped for shame. 

[1] It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, 
that the world owes the world more than the world can 
pay, and ought to go into chancery, and be sold. I 
do not think this general insolvency, which involves 
in some sort all the population, to be the reason of 
the difficulty experienced at Christmas and New Year, 
and other times, in bestowing gifts; since it is always 
so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to 
pay debts. But the impediment lies in the choosing. 
Ir, at any time, it comes into my head, that a present 
is due from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to 
give, until the opportunity is gone. Flowers and fruits 
are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a 
proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the 
utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast 
with the somewhat stern countenance of ordinary 
nature: they are like music heard out of a work-house. 
Nature does not cocker us: we are children, not pets: 
she is not fond: everjihing is dealt to us without fear 
or favor, after severe universal laws. Yet these delicate 
flowers look like the frolic and interference of love and 
beauty. Men use to tell us that we love flattery, even 
though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that 

52* 



GIFTS 53 

we are of importance enough to be courted. Some- 
thing like that pleasure, the flowers give us: what am 
I to whom these sweet hints are addressed? Fruits 
are acceptable gifts, because they are the flower of com- 
modities, and admit of fantastic values being attached 
to them. If a man should send to me to come a 
hundred miles to visit him, and should set before me 
a basket of fine summer-fruit, I should think there was 
some proportion between the labor and the reward. 

[2] For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences 
and beauty every day, and one is glad when an im- 
perative leaves him no option, since if the man at the 
door have no shoes, you have not to consider whether 
you could procure him a paint box. And as it is always 
pleasing to see a man eat bread, or drink water, in the 
house or out of doors, so it is always a great satisfaction 
to supply these first wants. Necessity does every- 
thing well. In our condition of universal dependence, 
it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his 
necessity, and to give all that is asked, though at great 
inconvenience. If it be a fantastic desire, it is better 
to leave to others the office of punishing him. I can 
think of many parts I should prefer playing to that of 
the Furies. Next to things of necessity, the rule for a 
gift, which one of my friends prescribed, is, that we 
might convey to some person that which properly be- 
longed to his character, and was easily associated with 
him in thought. But our tokens of compliment and 
love are for the most part barbarous. Rings and other 
jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only 
gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. 



54 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, 
his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, 
coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a 
handkerchief of her own se^\nng. This is right and 
pleasing, for it restores society in so far to its primary 
basis, when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift, 
and every man's wealth is an index of his merit. But 
it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to 
buy me something which does not represent your life 
and talent, but a goldsmith's. This is fit for kings, and 
rich men who represent kings, and a false state of prop- 
erty, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind 
of svmbolical sin-offering, or payment of blackmail. 

[3] The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which 
requires careful sailing, or rude boats. It is not the 
office of a man to receive gifts. How dare you give 
them? We w^ish to be self -sustained. We do not quite 
forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some 
danger of being bitten. We can receive anything from 
love, for that is a way of receiving it from ourselves; 
but not from any one who assumes to bestow. We 
sometimes hate the meat w^hich w^e eat, because there 
seems something of degrading dependence in living by it. 

Brother, if Jove to thee a present make. 

Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take. 

We ask the whole. Nothing less w^ill content us. 
We arraign society, if it do not give us besides earth, 
and fire, and water, opportunity, love, reverence, and 
objects of veneration. 

[4] He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. 



GIFTS 55 

We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions 
are unbecoming. Some violence, I think, is done, 
some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a 
gift. I am sorry when my independence is invaded, 
or when a gift comes from such as do not know my 
spirit, and so the act is not supported; and if the gift 
pleases me overmuch then I should be ashamed that 
the donor should read my heart, and see that I love 
his commodity and not him. The gift, to be true, 
must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent 
to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at 
level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All 
his are mine, all mine his. I say to him. How can 
you give me this })ot of oil, or this flagon of wine, when 
all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this 
gift seems to deny? Hence the fitness of beautiful, 
not useful things for gifts. This giving is flat usurpa- 
tion, and therefore when the beneficiary is ungrateful, 
as all beneficiaries hate all Timons, not at all consider- 
ing the value of the gift, but looking back to the greater 
store it was taken from, I rather sympathize with the 
beneficiary, than with the anger of my lord Timon. 
For, the expectation of gratitude is mean, and is con- 
tinually punished by the total insensibility of the 
obliged person. It is a great happiness to get off without 
injury and heart-burning, from one who has had the 
ill luck to be served by you. It is a very onerous business, 
this of being served, and the debtor naturally wishes 
to give you a slap. A golden text for these gentlemen 
is that which I so admire in the Buddhist, who never 
thanks, and who says, ** Do not flatter your benefactors." 



56 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

[5] The reason of these discords I conceive to be, 
that there is no commensurabiHty between a man and 
any gift. You cannot give an}i:hing to a magnanimous 
person. After you have served him, he at once puts 
you in debt by his magnanimity. The service a man 
renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with 
the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to 
yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, 
and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear 
my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him 
seems small. Besides, our action on each other, good 
as w^ell as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we 
can seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person 
w^ho would thank us for a benefit, without some shame 
and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct, stroke, 
but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom 
have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which 
is directly received. But rectitude scatters favors on 
every side without knowing it, and receives with won- 
der the thanks of all people. 

[6] I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty 
of love, which is the genius and god of gifts, and to 
whom we must not affect to prescribe. Let him give 
kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently. There are 
persons from whom we always expect fairy tokens; 
let us not cease to expect them. This is prerogative, 
and not to be limited by our municipal rules. For 
the rest, I like to see that we cannot be bought and sold. 
The best of hospitality and of generosity is also not in 
the will but in fate. I find that I am not much to you; 
you do not need me; you do not feel me; then am I 



GIFTS 67 

thrust out of doors, though you proffer me house and 
lands. No services are of any value, but only likeness. 
When I have attempted to join myself to others by 
services, it proved an intellectual trick, — .no more. 
They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. 
But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you 
all the time, 



SELF-RELIANCE. 

Ne te qusesiveris extra. 

Man is his own star; and the soul that can 
Render an honest and a perfect man, 
Commands all light, all influence, all fate; 
Nothing to him falls early or too late. 
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill. 
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still. 
Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher^ fi Honest Man^s Fortune, 

Cast the bantling on the rocks, 
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat, 
Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
Power and speed be hands and feet. 

[1] I READ the other day some verses written by an 
eminent painter which were original and not con- 
ventional. Always the soul hears an admonition in 
such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sen- 
timent they instil is of more value than any thought 
they may contain. To believe your own thought, to 
believe that what is true for you in your private heart 
is true for all men, — 'that is genius. Speak your 
latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; 
for always the inmost becomes the outmost — ^and our 
first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets 
of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the 
mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, 
Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught books and 
traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they 

58 



SELF-RELIANCE 59 

thought. A man should learn to detect and watch 
that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from 
within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards 
and sag^. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, 
because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize 
our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with 
a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have 
no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach 
us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good- 
humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of 
voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger 
will say with masterly good sense precisely what we 
have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be 
forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. 
[2] There is a time in every man's education when 
he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; 
that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself 
for better for worse as his portion; that though the 
wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing 
corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed 
on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. 
The power which resides in him is new in nature, and 
none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor 
does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one 
face, one character, one fact, makes much impression 
on him, and another none. It is not without pre- 
established harmony, this sculpture in the memory. 
The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it 
might testify of that particular ray. Bravely let him 
speak the utmost syllable of his confession. We but 
half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine 



60 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

idea which each of us represents. It may be safely 
trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be 
faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work 
made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine man to 
exhibit an}i:hing divine. A man is relieved and gay 
when he has put his heart into his work and done his 
best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give 
him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not 
deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no 
muse befriends; no invention, no hope. 

[3] Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron 
string. Accept the place the divine providence has 
found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the 
connexion of events. Great men have always done so, 
and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their 
age, betra}dng their perception that the Eternal was 
stirring at their heart, working through their hands, 
predominating in all their being. And we are now men, 
and must accept in the highest mind the same tran- 
scendent destiny; and not pinched in a corner, not 
cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and 
benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay; under the 
Almighty effort let us advance on Chaos and the Dark. 

[4] What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text 
in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even 
brutes. That divided and rebel mind, that distrust 
of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed 
the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these 
have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet 
unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are 
disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all con- 



SELF-RELIANCE 61 

form to It; so that one babe commonly makes four or 
five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So 
God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no 
less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it 
enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, 
if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has 
no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. 
Hark ! in the next room who spoke so clear and emphatic? 
It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. 
Good Heaven! it is he! it is that very lump of bash- 
fulness and phlegm which for weeks has done nothing 
but eat when you were by, and now rolls out these words 
like bell-strokes. It seems he knows how to speak to 
his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, he will 
know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. 

[5] The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a din- 
ner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say 
aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human 
nature. How is a boy the master of society; independ- 
ent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such 
people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences 
them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, 
as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. 
He cumbers himself never about consequences, about 
interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. 
You must court him; he does not court you. But the 
man is as it were clapped into jail by his consciousness. 
As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat he is 
a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the 
hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter 
into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, 



62 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

that he could pass again into his neutral, godlike inde- 
pendence! Who can thus lose all pledge and, having 
observed, observe again from the same unaffected, 
unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must 
always be formidable, must always engage the poet's 
and the man's regards. Of such an immortal youth 
the force would be felt. He would utter opinions on 
all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private 
but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of 
men and put them in fear. 

[6] These are the voices which we hear in solitude, 
but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into 
the world. Society everywhere is in (conspiracy against 
the manhood of every one of its members. Society is 
a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, 
for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, 
to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The 
virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance 
is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, 
but names and customs. 

[7] Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. 
He who would gather immortal palms must not be 
hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore 
if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the 
integrity of our own mind. Absolve you to yourself, 
and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember 
an answer which when quite young I was prompted 
to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune 
me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my 
saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of tradi- 
tions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, 



SELF-RELIANCE 63 

— '''But these impulses may be from below, not from 
above/' I replied, ''They do not seem to me to be such 
but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the 
devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my 
nature. Good and bad are but names very readily 
transferable to that or this; the only right is what is 
after my constitution; the only wrong what is against 
it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all 
opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral 
but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitu- 
late to badges and names, to large societies and dead 
institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual 
affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go 
upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. 
If malice and vanity wear the <.*oat of philanthropy, 
shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bounti- 
ful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last 
news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, 
*'Gk) love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good- 
natured and modest; have that grace; and never varnish 
your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible 
tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy 
love afar is spite at home." Rough and graceless 
would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than 
the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some 
edge to it, — ^Ise it is none. The doctrine of hatred 
must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine 
of love, when that pules and whines. I shun father 
and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls 
me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, 
Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at 



64 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Ex- 
pect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude 
company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man 
did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good 
situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish 
philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the 
cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to 
whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to 
whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; 
for them I will go to prison if need be; but your mis- 
cellaneous popular charities; the education at college 
of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain 
end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the 
thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with 
shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a 
wicked dollar, which by-and-by I shall have the man- 
hood to withhold. 

[8] Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the 
exception than the rule. There is the man and his 
virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some 
piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a 
fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. 
Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of 
their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay 
a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not 
wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, 
but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I 
much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be 
genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and 
unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sXveet, and not 
to need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique; 



SELF-RELIANCE 65 

it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. 
I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse 
this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that 
for myself it makes no difference whether I do or for- 
bear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I 
cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have 
intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I 
actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or 
the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. 

[9] What I must do is all that concerns me, not what 
the people think. This rule, equally arduous in ac- 
tual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole 
distinction between greatness and meanness. It is 
the harder because you will always find those who think 
they know what is your duty better than you know it. 
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; 
it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great 
man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with 
perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. 

[10] The objection to conforming to usages that have 
become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It 
loses your time and blurs the impression of your char- 
acter. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a 
dead Bible Society, vote with a great party either for 
the Government or against it, spread your table like 
base housekeepers, — under all these screens I have 
difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And of 
course so much force is withdrawn from your proper 
life. But do your thing, and I shall know you. Do 
your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man 
must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of 



66 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

conformity. If I know your sect I anticipate your argu- 
ment. I hear a preacher announce for his text and 
topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his 
church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly 
can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not 
know that w^ith all this ostentation of examining the 
grounds of the institution he will do no such thing? 
Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look 
but at one side, the permitted side, not as a man, but 
as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and 
these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. 
Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or 
another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some 
one of these communities of opinion. This conformity 
makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of 
a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every 
truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, 
their four not the real four: so that every word they 
say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to 
set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip 
us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we ad- 
here. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and 
acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. 
There is a mortifying experience in particular, which 
does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; 
I mean *^the foolish face of praise," the forced smile 
which we put on in company where we do not feel at 
ease, in answer to conversation which does not interest 
us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved 
by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the 
outline of the face, and make the most disagreeable 



SELF-RELIANCE 67 

sensation; a sensation of rebuke and warning which 
no brave young man will suffer twice. 

[11] For non-conformity the world whips you with 
its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how 
to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance 
on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor. 
If this aversation had its origin in contempt and re- 
sistance like his own he might well go home with a sad 
countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, 
like their sweet faces, have no deep cause — disguise 
no god, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a 
newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multi-/ 
tude more formidable than that of the senate and the 
college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the 
world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their 
rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid, as being 
very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine 
rage the indignation of the people is added, when the 
ignorant and the poor are aroused, A^^hen the unintelli- 
gent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is 
made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magna- 
nimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no 
concernment. 

^12] The other terror that scares us from self-trust 
is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word 
because the eyes of others have no other data for com- 
puting our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath 
to disappoint them. 

[13] But why should you keep your head over your 
shoulder? Why drag about this monstrous corpse 
of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you 



68 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

have stated in this or that piibUc place? Suppose 
you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems 
to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on vour memory 
alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to 
bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed 
present, and live ever in a new day. Trust your emotion. 
In your metaphysics you have denied personality to 
the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, 
yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe 
God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as 
Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. 

[14] A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little 
minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers 
and divines. With consistency a great soul has sim- 
ply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself 
with his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded 
lips! Sew them up with packthread, do. Else if you 
would be a man speak what you think to-day in words 
as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what 
to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it con- 
tradict every thing you said to-day. Ah, then, exclaim 
the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood ! 
Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is it so 
bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was mis- 
understood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and 
Copernicus, and Galileo, and Ne\\i;on, and every pure 
and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to 
be misunderstood. 

[15] I suppose no man can violate his nature. All 
the sallies of his w^ill are rounded in by the law of his 
being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are 



SELF-RELIANCE 69 

insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it 
jaaatter how you gauge and try him. A character is 
like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; — ^read it for- 
ward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. 
In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows 
me, let me record day by day my honfest thought with- 
out prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will 
be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it 
not. My book should smell of pines and resound with 
the hum of insects. The swallow over my window 
should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his 
bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. 
Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that 
they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt 
actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath 
every moment. 

[16] Fear never but you shall be consistent in what- 
ever variety of actions, so they be each honest and 
natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will 
be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These 
varieties are lost sight of when seen at a little distance, 
at a little height of thought. One tendency unites 
them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag 
line of a hundred tacks. This is only microscopic 
criticism. See the line from a sufficient distance, and 
it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your 
genuine action will explain itself and will explain your 
other genuine actions. Your conformity explains 
nothing. Act singly, and what you have already 
done singly will justify you now. Greatness always 
appeals to the fu-ture. If I can be great enough 



70 EMERSOX'S ESSAYS 

now to do right and scorn eyes, I must have done so 
much right before as to defend me now. Be it how 4k 
it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances ^ln^ 
and you always may. The force of character is cumu- 
lative. All the foregone days of virtue work their 
health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes 
of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagina- 
tion? The consciousness of a train of great days and 
victories behind. There they aU stand and shed an 
united hght on the advancing actor. He is attended as 
by a visible escort of angels to every man's eye. Tliat 
is it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and 
dignity into Washington's port, and America into 
Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is 
no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We wor- 
ship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love 
it and pay it homage because it is not a trap for our 
love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, 
and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if 
shown m a young person. 

[17] I hope in these days we have heard the last of 
conformity and consistency. Let the words be ga- 
zetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the 
gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan 
fife. Let us bow and apologize ne^er more. A great 
man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to 
please him: I wish that he should wish to please me. 
I will stand here for humanity, and though I would 
make it kind, I would make it true. Let us aifront 
and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid con- 
tentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom 



i 



SELF-RELIANCE 71 

and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of 
all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker 
and Actor moving wherever moves a man; that a true 
man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre 
of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures 
you and all men and all events. You are constrained 
to accept his standard. Ordinarily, every body in 
society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other 
person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing 
else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man 
must be so much that he must make all circumstances 
indifferent — ^put all means into the shade. This all 
gTeat men are and do. Every true man is a cause, a 
country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and num- 
bers and time fully to accomplish his thought; — and 
posterity seem to follow his steps as a procession. A 
man C?esar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman 
Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so 
grow and cleave to his genius that he is confounded 
with virtue and the possible of man. An institution 
is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, the Reforma- 
tion, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; ^Methodism, of 
Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called 
''the height of Rome;" and all history resolves itself 
very easily into the biography of a few stout and 
earnest persons. 

[18] Let a man then know his worth, and keep things 
under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk 
up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, 
or an interloper in the world which exists for him. 
But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself 



72 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

which corresponds to the force which built a tower or 
sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on 
these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book 
have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay 
equipage, and seem to say like that, 'Who are you, sir?' 
Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners 
to his faculties that they will come out and take posses- 
sion. The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to 
command me, Vjut I am to settle its claim to praise. 
That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead 
drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed 
and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his 
w^aking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the 
duke, and assured that he had been insane — owes 
its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well 
the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but 
now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds 
himself a true prince. 

[19] Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. 
In history our imagination makes fools of us, plays us 
false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are 
a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward 
in a small house and common day's work: but the 
things of life are the same to both: the sum total of 
both is the same. Whv all this deference to Alfred 
and Scanderbeg and Gustavus? Suppose they were 
virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake 
depends on your private act to-day as followed their 
public and renowned steps. When private men shall 
act with original views, the lustre will be transferred 
from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. 



SELF-RELIANCE 73 

[20] The world has indeed been instructed by its 
kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. 
It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual 
reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful 
loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the 
king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among 
them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men 
and things and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not 
with money but with honor, and represent .the Law 
in his person, was the hieroglyphic by w^hich they 
obscurely signified their consciousness of their own 
right and comeliness, the right of every man. 

[21] The magnetism which all original action exerts 
is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. 
Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, 
on which a universal reliance may be grounded? 
What is the nature and power of that science-baffling 
star, w^ithout parallax, without calculable elements, 
which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and im- 
pure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? 
The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence 
of genius, the essence of virtue, and the essence of life, 
which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote 
this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teach- 
ings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact be- 
hind which analysis cannot go, all things find their 
common origin. For the sense of being which in calm 
hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse 
from things, from space, from light, from time, from 
man, but one with them and proceedeth obviously 
from the same source whence their life and being also 



74 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

proceedeth. We first share the Ufe by which things 
exist and afterwards see them as appearances in nature 
and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is 
the fountain of action and the fountain of thought. 
Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth 
man wisdom, of that inspiration of man which cannot 
be denied without impiety and atheism. We Ue in the 
lap of immense intelligence, which makes us organs of 
its activity and receivers of its truth. When we discern 
justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of our- 
selves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask 
whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that 
causes — all metaphysics, all philosophy is at fault. 
Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every 
man discerns between the voluntary acts of his mind 
and his involuntary perceptions. And to his involun- 
tary perceptions he knows a perfect respect is due. 
He may err in the expression of them, but he knows 
that these things are so, like day and night, not to be 
disputed. All my wilful actions and acquisitions are 
but roving; — the most trivial reverie, the faintest 
native emotion, are domestic and divine. Thought- 
less people contradict as readily the statement of per- 
ceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; 
for they do not distinguish between perception and 
notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that 
thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If 
I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in 
course of time all mankind, — although it may chance 
that no one has seen it before me. For my perception 
of it is as much a fact as the sun. 



SELF-RELIANCE 75 

[22] The relations of the soul to the divine spirit 
are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. 
It must be that when God speaketh he should communi- 
cate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world 
with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, 
time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; 
and new date and new create the whole. Whenever 
a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, then old 
things pass away, — ^means, teachers, texts, temples fall; 
it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the 
present hour. All things are made sacred by relation 
to it, — one thing as much as another. All things are 
dissolved to their centre by their cause, and in the 
universal miracle petty and particular miracles dis- 
appear. This is and must be. Tf therefore a man 
claims to know and speak of God and carries you back- 
ward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation 
in another country, in another world, believe him not. 
Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness 
and completion? Is the parent better than the child 
into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence 
then this worship of the past? The centuries are 
conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the soul. ^ 
Time and space are but physiological colors A^hich the 
eye maketh, but the soul is light; whei-e it is, is' day; 
where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence 
and an injury if it be any thing more than a cheerful 
apologue or parable of my being and becoming. 

[23] Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer 
upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am/ but quotes 
some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade 



76 



EMERSON'S ESSAYS 



of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my 
window make no reference to former roses or to better 
ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God 
to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply 
the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. 
Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in 
the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless 
root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied and it 
satisfies nature in all moments alike. There Ls no time 
to it. But man postpones or remembers; he does not 
live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the 
past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands 
on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy 
and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, 
above time. 

[24] This should be plain enough. Yet see what 
strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself unless 
he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or 
Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great 
a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like 
children who repeat by rote the sentences of gran- 
dames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men 
of talents and character they chance to see, — ^painfully 
recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, 
when they come into the point of view which those had 
who uttered these sayings, they understand them and 
are willing to let the words go; for at any time they can 
use words as good when occasion comes. So was it 
with us, so will it be, if we proceed. If we live truly, 
we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to 
be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we 



SELF-RELIANCE 77 

have new perception, we shall gladly disburthen the 
memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. 
When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet 
as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. 

[25] And now at last the highest truth on this sub- 
ject remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all 
that we say is the far off remembering of the intuition. 
That thought, by what I can now nearest approach to 
say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have 
life in yourself, — it is not by any known or appointed 
way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; 
you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any 
name; — the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly 
strange and new. It shall exclude all other being. 
You take the way from man, not to man. All persons 
that ever existed are its fugitive ministers. There 
shall be no fear in it. Fear and hope are alike beneath 
it. It asks- nothing. There is somewhat low even 
in hope. We are then in vision. There is nothing 
that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The 
soul is raised over passion. It seeth identity and 
eternal causation. It is a perceiving that Truth and 
Right are. Hence it becomes a Tranquillity out of 
the knowing that all things go well. Va.st spaces of 
nature; the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; vast inter- 
vals of time, years, centuries, are of no account. This 
w^hich I think and feel underlay that former state of 
life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present 
and will always all circumstances, and what is called 
life and what is called death. 

[26] life only avails, not the having lived. Power 



78 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment 
of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting 
of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact 
the world hates, that the soul becomes; for that forever 
degrades the past; turns all riches to poverty, all reputa- 
tion to a shame; confounds the saint with the ro^-ue 
shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why then do 
we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is 
present there will be power not confident but agent. 
To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. 
Speak rather of that which relies because it works and 
is. Who has more soul than I masters me, though he 
should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve 
by the gravitation of spirits. Who has less I rule with 
like facility. We fancy it rhetoric when we speak of 
eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is 
Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic 
and permeable to principles, by the law of .nature must 
overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, 
poets, who are not. 

[27] This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly 
reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all 
into the ever-blessed One. Virtue is the governor, 
the creator, the reality. All things real are so by so 
much virtue as they contain. Hardship, husbandry, 
hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, personal weight, 
are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of 
the soul's presence and impure action. I see the same 
law working in nature for conservation and growth. 
The poise of a planet, the bended tree recovering itself 
from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal 



SELF-RELIANCE 79 

and veo:etable, are also demonstrations of the self- 
sufficing and therefore self -relying soul. All history, 
from its highest to its trivial passages is the various 
record of this power. 

[28] Thus all concentrates; let us not rove; let us 
sit at home with the cause. I^et us stun and astonish 
the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions 
by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid them 
take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. 
Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our 
own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune 
beside our native riches. 

[29] But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in 
awe of man, nor is the soul admonished to stay at home, 
to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, 
but it goes abroad to beg a cup of w^ater of the urns of 
men. We must go alone. Isolation must precede 
true society. I like the silent church before the service 
begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how 
cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with 
a precinct or sanctuary. So let us always sit. Why 
should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or 
father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, 
or are said to have the same blood? iVll men have 
my blood and I have all men's. Not for that will I 
adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of 
being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be 
mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. 
At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to 
importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, 
child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once 



80 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

at thy closet door and say, 'Come out unto us.' — Do 
not spill thy soul; do not all descend; keep thy state; 
stay at home in thine own heaven; come not for a mo- 
ment into their facts, into their hubbub of conflicting 
appearances, but let in the light of thy law on their con- 
fusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give 
them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near 
me but through my act. ''What we love that we have, 
but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love. " 
j^ [30] If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obe- 
dience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations, 
let us enter into the state of war and wake Thor and 
Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. 
This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking 
the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying 
affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these 
deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. 
Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, 

friend, I have lived with you after appearances hith- 
erto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known 
unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the 
eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. 

1 shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my 
family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, — but 
these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented 
way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. 
I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. 
If you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier. 
If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. 
I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aver- 
sions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I 



SELF-RELIANCE 81 

will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly 
rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, 
I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and 
myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, 
but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your com- 
panions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly 
but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and 
mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in 
lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? 
You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as 
well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us 
out safe at last. — But so may you give these friends 
pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, 
to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have 
their moments of reason, when they look out into the 
region of absolute truth; then will they justify me and 
do the same thing. 

[31] The populace think that your rejection of popu- 
lar standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere 
antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name 
of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of con- 
sciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one 
or the other of which we must be shriven. You may ful- 
fil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, 
or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have satis- 
fied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, 
town, cat and dog; whether any of these can upbraid 
you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard and 
absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims 
and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to 
many offices that are called duties. But if I can dis- 



82 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

charge its debts it enables me to dispense with the 
popular code. If any one imagines that this law is 
lax, let him keep its commandment one day. 

[32] And truly it demands something godlike in 
him who has cast off the common motives of humanity 
and has ventured to trust himself for a task-master. 
High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, 
that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, 
to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as 
strong as iron necessity is to others. 

[33] If any man consider the present aspects of what 
is called by distinction society, he will see the need of 
these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be 
drawn out, and we are become timorous desponding 
whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, 
afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age 
yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and 
women who shall renovate life and our social state, but 
we see that most natures are insolvent; cannot satisfy 
their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion 
to their practical force, and so do lean and beg day and 
night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our 
arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion we 
have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are 
parlor soldiers. The rugged battle of fate, where 
strength is born, we shun. 

[34] If our young men miscarry in their first enter- 
prises they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, 
men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at 
one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office 
within one year afterwards, in the cities or suburbs of 



SELF-RELIANCE 83 

Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to 
himself that he is right in being disheartened and in 
complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New 
Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the profes- 
sions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, 
preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a 
township, and so forth, in successive years, and always 
like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these 
city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no 
shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he does not 
postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one 
chance, but a hundred chances. Let a stoic arise who 
shall reveal the resources of man and tell men they are 
not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; 
that with the exercise of self -trust, new powers shall 
appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed 
healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our 
compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, 
tossing the laws, the books, idolatries and customs out 
of the window^, — we pity him no more but thank and 
revere him; — and that teacher shall restore the life of 
man to splendor and make his name dear to all History. 

[35] It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance — a 
new respect for the divinity in man — must work a 
revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in 
their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; 
their modes of living; their association; in their prop- ) 
erty; in their speculative views. 

[36] 1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! 
That which they call a holy office is not so much as 
brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for 



84 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

some foreign addition to come through some foreign 
virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and 
supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer 
that craves a particular commodity — anjihing less than 
all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of 
the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is 
the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is 
the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But 
prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and 
meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature 
and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with 
God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all 
action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field 
to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the 
stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout 
nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher's 
Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the 
god x\udate, replies. 

His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; 

Our valors are our best gods. 

[37] Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. 
Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity 
of will. Regret calamities if you can thereby help the 
sufferer; if not, attend your own work and already 
the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just 
as base. We come to them who weep foolishly and sit 
down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them 
truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them 
once more in communication with the soul. The secret of 
foi-tune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods 
and men is the self -helping man. For him all doors are 



SELF-RELIANCE 85 

flung wide. Him all tongues greet, all honors crown, 
all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him 
and embraces him because he did not need it. We 
solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate 
him because he held on his way and scorned our dis- 
approbation. The gods love him because men hated 
him. *'To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, 
"the blessed Immortals are swift.*' 

[38] As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so 
are their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say 
with those foolish Israelites, 'Let not God speak to 
us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, 
and we will obey.' Everywhere I am bereaved of 
meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his 
own temple doors and recites fables merely of his 
brother's, or his brother's brother's God. Every new- 
mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of 
uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, 
a Hutton, a Bentham, a Spurzheim, it imposes its 
classification on other men, and lo! a new system. 
In proportion always to the depth of the thought, 
and so to the number of the objects it touches and 
brings within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. 
But chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, 
which are also classifications of some powerful mind 
acting on the great elemental thought of Duty and 
man's relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, 
Quakerism, Swedenborgianism. The pupil takes the 
same delight in subordinating every thing to the new 
terminology that a girl does who has just learned 
botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. 



86 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Tt will happen for a tiirie that the pupil will feel a real 
debt to the teacher — will find his intellectual power has 
grown by the study of his writings. This will continue 
until he has exhausted his master's mind. But in all 
unbalanced minds the classification is idolized, passes 
for the end and not for a speedily exhaustible means, 
so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in the 
remote horizon with the walls of the universe; the 
luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch 
their master built. They cannot imagine how you 
aliens have any right to see — how you can see; 'It 
must be somehow^ that you stole the light from us.' 
They do not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, 
indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. 
Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they 
are honest and do well, presently their neat new pin- 
fold will be too strait and low, wdll crack, will lean, will 
rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and 
joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over 
the universe as on the first morning. 

[39] 2. It is for want of self-culture that the idol of 
Travelling, the idol of Italy, of England, of Egypt, 
remains for all educated Americans. They who made 
England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination, 
did so not by rambling round creation as a moth round 
a lamp, but by sticking fast where they were, like an 
axis of the earth. In manly hours we feel that duty is 
our place and that the merry men of circumstance 
should follow as they may. The soul is no traveller: 
the wise man stays at home with the soul, and when his 
necessities, his duties, on anv occasion call him from his 



SELF-RELIANCE 87 

house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still and is 
not gadding abroad from himself, and shall make men 
sensible by the expression of his countenance that he 
goes, the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits 
cities and men like a sovereign and not like an inter-. 
loper or a valet. 

[40] I have no churlish objection to the circum- 
navigation of the globe for the purposes of art, of study, 
and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, 
or does not go abroad with the hope of finding some- 
what greater than he knows. He who travels to be 
amused or to get somewhat which he does not carry, 
travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth 
among old things. In Thebes, in Palm}Ta, his will 
and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. 
He carries ruins to ruins. 

[41] Ti'avellhig is a fool's paradise. We owe to our 
first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. 
At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be 
intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack 
my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and 
at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the 
stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I 
fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect 
to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am 
not intoxicated. ]\ly giant goes with me wherever I go. 

[42] 3. But the rage of travelling is itself only a s\^Tip- 
tom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the w^hole intel- 
lectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and the 
universal system of education fosters restlessness. Our 
painds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. 



88 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of 
the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; 
our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; 
our opinions, our tastes, our whole minds, lean, and 
follow the Past and the Distant, as the eyes of a maid 
follow her mistress. The soul created the arts wherever 
they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the 
artist sought his model. It was an application of his 
own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions 
to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or 
the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur 
of thought and quaint expression are as near to us as 
to any, and if the American artist will study with hope 
and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering 
the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of 
the people, the habit and form of the government, he will 
create a house in which all these will find themselves 
fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also. 

[43] Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own 
gift you can present every moment with the cumulative 
force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted 
talent of another you have only an extemporaneous 
half possession. That which each can do best, none 
but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows 
what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. 
Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? 
Where is the master who could have instructed Frank- 
lin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every 
great man is an unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is 
precisely that part he could not borrow. If anybody 
will tell me whom the great man imitates in the original 



SELF-RELIANCE 89 

crisis when he performs a great act, I will tell him who 
else than himself can teach him. Shakspeare will 
never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that 
which is assigned thee and thou canst not hope too 
much or dare too much. There is at this moment, 
there is for me an utterance bare and grand as that of 
the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, 
or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from all 
these. Not possibly will the soul, all rich, all eloquent, 
with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; 
but if I can hear what these patriarchs say, surely I can 
reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and 
the tongue are two organs of one nature. Dwell up 
there in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey 
thy heart and thou shalt reproduce the Fore world again. 

[44] 4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look 
abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume 
themselves on the improvement of society, and no man 
improves. 

[45] Society never advances. It recedes as fast on 
one side as it gains on the other. Its progress is only 
apparent like the workers of a treadmill. It under- 
goes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, 
it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this 
change is not amelioration. For every thing that is 
given something is taken. Society acquires new arts 
and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the 
well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a 
watch, a pencil and a bill of exchange in his pocket, 
and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, 
a spear, a mat and an undivided twentieth of a shed 



90 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

to sleep under. But compare the health of the two 
men and you shall see that his aboriginal strength, the 
white man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, strike 
the savage with a broad axe and in a day or two the flesh 
shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft 
pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave. 

[46] The civilized man has built a coach, but has 
lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, 
but lacks so much support of muscle. He has got a 
fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the 
hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he 
has, and so being sure of the information when he wants 
it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. 
The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he Imows as 
little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is with- 
out a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his 
memory: his libraries overload his wit; the insurance- 
office increases the number of accidents; and it ma,y be 
a question whether machinery does not encumber; 
whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by 
a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms 
some vigor of wild virtue. For every stoic was a stoic; 
but in Christendom where is the Christian? 

[47] There is no more deviation in the moral standard 
than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater 
men are now than ever were. A singular equality 
may be observed between the great men of the first 
and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, 
and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to 
educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, three or 
four and twentv centuries ago. Not in time is the race 



SELF-RELIANCE 91 

progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, 
are great men, but they leave no class. He who is 
really of their class will not be called by their name, but 
be wholly his own man, and in his turn the founder 
of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are 
only its costume and do not invigorate men. The harm 
of the improved machinery may compensate its good. 
Hudson and Behring accomplished so much in their 
fishing-boats as to astonish Parry and Franklin, w^hose 
equipment exhausted the resources of science and art. 
Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid 
series of facts than any one since. Columbus found the 
New^ World in an undecked boat. It is curious to 
see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and 
machinery which were introduced with loud laudation 
a few^ years or centuries before. The great genius 
returns to essential man. We reckoned the improve- 
ments of the art of war among the triumphs of science, 
and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the Bivouac, 
which consisted of falling back on naked valor and 
disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it 
impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Cases, 
** without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries 
and carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, 
the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in 
his hand-mill and bake his bread himself." 

[48] Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but 
the water of which it is composed does not. The 
same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. 
Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make 
up a nation to-day, die, and their experience with them. 



92 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

[49] And so the reliance on Property, including the 
reliance on governments which protect it, is the want 
of self-reliance. Men have looked away from them- 
selves and at things so long that they have come to 
esteem what they call the soul's progress, namely, the 
religious, learned and civil institutions, as guards of 
property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because 
they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure 
their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by 
what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed 
of his property, ashamed of what he has, out of new 
respect for his being. Especially he hates what he has 
if he see that it is accidental, came to him by inherit- 
ance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; 
it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely 
lies there because no revolution or no robber takes it 
away. But that which a man is, does always by neces- 
sity acquire, and what the man acquires, is permanent 
and living property, which does not wait the beck of 
rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or 
bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever 
the man is put. ''Thy lot or portion of life,'' said the 
Caliph Ali, ''is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest 
from seeking after it." Our dependence on these 
foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. 
The political parties meet in numerous conventions; 
the greater the concourse and with each new uproar of 
announcement, The delegation from Essex! The 
Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of 
INIaine! the young patriot feels himself stronger than 
before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like 



SELF-RELIANCE 93 

manner the reformers summon conventions and vote 
and resolve in multitude. But not so O friends! will 
the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method 
precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off from 
himself all external support and stands alone that I 
see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker 
by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better 
than a town? Ask nothing of men, and, in the endless 
mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear 
the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows 
that power is in the soul, that he is weak only because 
he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and, 
so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his 
thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect 
position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just 
as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man 
who stands on his head. 

[50] So use all that is called Fortune. Most men 
gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel 
rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, 
and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of 
God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast 
chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt always drag her 
after thee. A political victory, a rise of rents, the 
recovery of your sick or the return of your absent 
friend, or some other quite external event raises your 
spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. 
Do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can 
bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you 
peace but the triumph of principles. 



94 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

QUESTIONS 

(Numbers refer to pages and paragraphs.) 

58: 1. What is Emerson's definition of genius? Does a genius make 
what is true for him, true for all men? Give examples in art or in 
history. 

59 : 2. In what sense is imitation suicide? Is there a period of our 
lives when imitation is necessary? 

60:3. In the first sentence, why does Emerson call it an "iron'' 
string? What is the iron string? 

62:6. "Society is in conspiracy against the manhood of its mem- 
bers." What does Emerson mean by "society"? How is it in con- 
spiracy against its members? What liberty is surrendered? Is there 
any gain? 

63:7. "The only right is what is after my constitution." What is 
meant by constitution here? Do we surrender to badges and names? 
Should we support a man for President just because he is the candidate 
of our party? What would Emerson say? How may vanity wear 
the cloak of philanthropy? 

64:8. What does Emerson mean by saying his life is for itself, and 
not for a spectacle? 

65:9. In the last sentence why does Emerson insert the phrase 
"with perfect sweetness"? Compare if you can Emerson and Carlyle 
in their relations to their fellow-men. 

66: 10. What is meant by the statement that most men have bound 
themselves by one or another handkerchief? Does Emerson mean 
that one should belong to no society or party? Did he himself follow 
this rule? 

67: 11. Compare what Emerson says about the opinions of the mul- 
titude with his statements about the mob in Compensation, par. 41. 
Did he himself have the courage to defy the multitude? See Intro- 
duction. 

67: 12. What are the two things which keep us from being self-re- 
hant? 

68:14. What is Emerson's opinion of consistency? Compare it 
with the saying; "Consistency, thou art a jewel." Which do you 
believe? "To be great is to be misunderstood." Why should this 
be true? 

68:15. "Character teaches above our wills." Explain. 

69: 16. Explain the parallel between character and the voyage of a 
ship. "Greatness always appeals to the future." Give instances. 

70:17. Select quotable sentences in this paragraph. 

72: 19. In what respect are the things of life the same to the king 
as to the common man? 

76: 23. "Man postpones or remembers." Postpones what? 

76:24-25. Compare with this what is said on Transcendentalism, 
in the Introduction. 



SELF-RELIANCE 95 



80: 30. What is meant by "lying hospitality" and "lying affection"? 
In this paragraph what does Emerson advise us to do? Is his advice 
wise? 

82:32. What are the "direct" and "reflex" ways of fulfilling one's 
duties? 

83:34. What would the country boy gain by these experiences? 
What phrases in this paragraph are quoted from the Bible? 

84:36. What is Emerson's definition of prayer? 

84 : 37. Does Emerson mean we should never regret and never sym- 
pathize? Explain his point of view. 

85 : 38. Where does the style of this paragraph become almost poetic? 

87:41. State in your own words the thought of this paragraph. 
Do you agree with it? Compare the account in the Introduction of 
Emerson's first voyage to Europe. 

88:42. "Our houses are built with foreign taste, our shelves are 
garnished with foreign ornaments." Is this more or less true to-day 
than when Emerson wrote? 

88:43. Does Emerson mean that models are of no service, that we 
can learn nothing from what others have done? Select the best seJi- 
tences in this paragraph for quotation. 

89:45. "Society never advances." Do you believe this? Does 
Emerson prove it to your satisfaction in this and the following para- 
graph? 

90: 46. In what sense has tlie civilized man lost the use of his feet? 
Note that in order to impress his thought Emerson sometimes makes 
statements that require to be qualified and explained. "Note books 
impair memory." How? How do insurance companies increase 
accidents? What general law, discussed in another essay, do these 
facts illustrate? 

91 : 47. "The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume 
and do not invigorate men." Explain this. Is this the usual view? 

91:48. Is it true that when persons die their experience dies with 
them? 

93: 50. What part of this paragraph shows Erperson's high ideals? 

Has this essay an introduction? Is it necessary? 

In which paragraphs of the group 11-15 does Emerson seem to be 
most in earnest? 

Do Emerson's essays possess individuality? Do j^ou think you 
could recognize a page of his writing if some one read it to you, with- 
out telling you the author? Is it his style or his thought that makes 
his writing different from others? 

Which of these words apply to his style: smooth, musical, dignified, 
figurative, clear, difficult, obscure? 

Which of these words apply to his thought : commonplace stimu- 
lating, dull, original, eccentric, logical, rambling? 

Does he quote frequently from other writers? From whom? 



1 



MANNERS. 

How near to good is what is fair! 

AVhich we no sooner see, 
But with the Hnes and outward air 

Our senses taken be. 



Again yourselves compose, 
And now put all the aptness on 
Of FigTire, that Proportion 

Or Color can disclose; 
That if those silent arts were lost. 
Design and Picture, they might boast 

From you a newer ground. 
Instructed by the heightening sense 
Of dignity and reverence 

In their true motions found. 

Ben Jonson. 

[1] Half the world, it is said, know^s not how the 
other half live. Our Exploring Expedition saw the 
Eeejee islanders getting their dinner off human bones; 
and they are said to eat their own wives and children. 
The husbandry of the modern inhabitants of Gournou 
(w'est of old Thebes) is philosophical to a fault. To 
set up their housekeeping, nothing is requisite but 
tw^o or three earthen pots, a stone to grind meal, and 
a mat w^hich is the bed. The house, namely, a tomb, 
is ready w^ithout rent or taxes. No rain can pass 
through the roof, and there is no door, for there is no 
want of one, as there is nothing to lose. If the house 
do not please them, they walk out and enter another, 

96 



MANNERS 97 

as there are several hundreds at their command. 
*'It is somewhat singular," adds Belzoni, to whom we 
owe this account, '*to talk of happiness among people 
who live in sepulchres, among the corpses and rags of an 
ancient nation which thev know nothino; of." In 
the deserts of Borgoo, the rock-Tibboos still dwell in 
caves, like cliff-swallows, and the language of these 
negroes is compared by their neighbors to the shrieking 
of bats, and to the whistling of birds. Again, the Bor- 
noos have no proper names: individuals are called after 
their height, thickness, or other accidental quality, and 
have nick-names merely. But the salt, the dates, the 
ivory, and the gold, for which these horrible regions 
are visited, find their way into countries, where the 
purchaser and consumer can hardly be ranked in one 
race with these cannibals and man-stealers; countries 
where man serves himself with metals, wood, stone, 
glass, gum, cotton, silk, and wool; honors himself with 
architecture; writes laws, and contrives to execute his 
will through the hands of many nations; and, especially, 
establishes a select society, running through all the 
countries of intelligent men, a self-constituted aristoc- 
racy, or fraternity of the best, which, without written 
law or exact usage of any kind, perpetuates itself, 
colonizes every new-planted island, and adopts and 
makes its own whatever personal beauty or extraordi- 
nary native endowment anywhere appears. 

[2] What fact more conspicuous in modern history, 
than the creation of the gentleman? Chivalry is that, 
and loyalty is that, and, in English literature, half the 
drama, and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to 



98 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure. The word gentle- 
man, which, like the word Christian, must hereafter 
characterize the present and the few preceding cen- 
turies, by the importance attached to it, is a homage to 
personal and incommunicable properties. Frivolous 
and fantastic additions have got associated with the 
name, but the stead v interest of mankind in it must be 
attributed to the valuable properties which it designates. 
An element vdiich unites all the most forcible persons 
of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable 
to each other, and is somewhat so precise, that it is at 
once felt if an individual lack the masonic sign, cannot 
be any casual product, but must be an average result 
of the character and faculties universally found in men. 
It seems a certain permanent average; as the atmosphere 
is a permanent composition, whilst so many gases are 
combined only to be decompounded. Comme il faut, 
is the Frenchman's description of good society, as ice 
must he. It is a spontaneous fruit of talents and feel- 
ings of precisely that class who have most vigor, who 
take the lead in the world of this hour, and, though far 
from pure, far from constituting the gladdest and high- 
est tone of human feeling, is as good as the whole so- 
ciety permits it to be. It is made of the spirit, more 
than of the talent of men, and is a compound result, 
into which every great force enters as an ingredient, 
namely, virtue, wit, beauty, wealth, and power. 

[3] There is something equivocal in all the words in 
use to express the excellence of manners and social 
cultivation, because the quantities are fluctional, and 
the last effect is assumed bv the senses as the cause. 



MANNERS 99 

The word gentleraan has not any correlative abstract 
to express the quality. Gentility is mean, and gentilesse 
is obsolete. But we must keey) alive in the vernacular, 
the distinction bet^^een jashion, a word of narrow and 
often sinister meaning, and the heroic character which 
the gentleman imports. The usual words, however, 
must.be respected: they will be found to contain the 
root of the matter. The point of distinction in all this 
class of names, as courtesy, chivalry, fashion, and the 
like, is, that the flower and fruit, not the grain of tlie 
tree, are contemplated. It is beauty which is the 
aim this time, and not worth. The result is now in 
question, although our words intimate well enough the 
popular feeling, that the appearance supposes a sub- 
stance. The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his 
ovv'n actions, and expressing that lordship in his behav- 
ior, not in any manner dependent and servile either 
on persons, or opinions, or possessions. Beyond this 
fact of truth and real force, the word denotes good- 
nature or benevolence; manhood first, and then gentle- 
ness. The popular notion certainly adds a condition 
of ease and fortune; but that is a natural result of 
personal force and love, that they should possess and 
dispense the goods of the world. In times of violence, 
every eminent person must fall in with many oppor- 
tunities to approve his stoutness and worth; therefore 
every man's name that emerged at all from the mass in 
the feudal ages, rattles in our ear like a flourish of 
trumpets. But personal force never goes out of fashion. 
That is still paramount to-day, and, in the moving 
crowd of good society, the men of valor and reality 

LOFC. 



100 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

are knoT^n, and rise to their natural place. The 
competition is transferred from war to politics and 
trade, but the personal force appears readily enough 
in these new arenas. 

[4] Power first, or no leading class. In politics and 
in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise 
than talkers and clerks. God knows that all sorts of 
gentlemen knock at the door; but whenever used in 
strictness, and with any emphasis, the name will be 
found to point at original energy. It describes a man 
standing in his own right, and working after untaught 
methods. In a good lord, there must first be a good 
animal, at least to the extent of yielding the incom- 
parable advantage of animal spirits. The ruling class 
must have more, but they must have these, giving in 
every company the sense of power, which makes things 
easy to be done which daunt the wise. The society of 
the energetic class, in their friendly and festive meetings, 
is full of courage, and attempts, which intimidate the 
pale scholar. The courage which girls exhibit is like a 
battle of Lundy's Lane, or a sea fight. The intellect 
relics on memory to make some supplies to face these 
extemporaneous squadrons. But memory is a base 
mendicant with basket and badge, in the presence of 
these sudden masters. The rulers of society must be 
up to the work of the world, and equal to their versatile 
office: men of the right Caesarian pattern, who have 
great I'ange of affinity. 1 am far from believing the 
timid maxim of Lord Falkland, C'that for ceremony 
there must go two to it; since a bold fellow will go 
through the cunningest forms,") and am of opinion 



MANNERS 101 

that the gentleman is the bold fellow whose forms are 
not to be broken through; and only that plenteous 
nature is rightful master, which is the complement of 
whatever person it converses with. My gentleman 
gives the law^ where he is; he will outpray saints in 
chapel, outgeneral veterans in the field, and outshine 
all courtesy in the hall. He is good company for pirates, 
and good with academicians; so that it is useless to 
fortify yourself against him; he has the private entrance 
to all minds, and I could as easily exclude myself, as 
him. The famous gentlemen of Asia and Europe 
have been of this strong type; Saladin, Sapor, the Cid, 
Julius Csesar, Scipio, Alexander, Pericles, and the 
lordliest personages. They sat very carelessly in their 
chairs, and were too excellent themselves to value anv 
condition at a high rate. 

[5] A plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in the 
popular judgment, to the completion of this man of 
the world: and it is a material deputy which walks 
through the dance which the first has led. Money 
is not essential, but this wide affinity is, which transcends 
the habits of clique and caste, and makes itself felt by 
men of all classes. If the aristocrat is only valid in fash- 
ionable circles, and not wdth truckmen, he will never be 
a leader in fashion; and if the man of the people cannot 
speak on equal terms with the gentleman, so that the 
gentleman shall perceive that he is already really of his 
own order, he is not to be feared. Diogenes, Socrates, 
and Epaminondas, are gentlemen of the best blood, who 
have chosen the condition of poverty, when that of 
wealth was equally open to them. I use these old names, 



102 EMERSOX'S ESSAYS 

but the men I speak of are my contemporaries. For- 
tune vvill not supply to every generation one of these 
well-appointed knights, but every collection of m^n 
furnishes some example of the class: and the politics 
of this country, and the trade of every town, are con- 
trolled by these hardy and irresponsible doers, who have 
invention to take the lead, and a broad s\TQpathy which 
puts them in fellowship with crowds, and makes their 
action popular. 

[6] The manners of this class are observed and 
caught with devotion by men of taste. The associa- 
tion of these masters with each other, and vriih. men 
intelligent of their merits, is mutually agreeable and 
stimulating. The good forms, the happiest expres- 
sions of each, are repeated and adopted. By s^-ift 
consent, e\'er^i:hing superfluous is dropped, every- 
thing graceful is renewed. Fine manners show them- 
selves formidable to the uncultivated man. They are 
a subtler science of defence to parry and hitimidate; 
but once matched by the skill of the other party, they 
drop the point of the sword, — points and fences dis- 
appear, and the youth finds himself in a more trans- 
parent atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome 
game, and not a misunderstanding rises between the 
players. ^Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of 
impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. 
They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway 
aids travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstruc- 
tions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered 
but pure space. These forms very soon become fixed, 
and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with the more 



MANNERS 103 

heed, that it becomes a badge of social and civil dis- 
tinction. Thus grows up Fashion, an equivocal sem- 
blance, the most puissant, the most fantastic and friv- 
olous, the most feared and followed, and which morals 
and violence assault in vain. 

[7] There exists a strict relation between the class 
of power, and the exclusive and polished circles. The 
last are always filled or filling from the first. The 
strong men usually give some allowance even to the 
petulances of fashion, for that affinity they find in it. 
Napoleon, child of the revolution, destroyer of the old 
noblesse, never ceased to court the Faubourg; St. 
Germain: doubtless with the feeling, that fashion is a 
homage to men of his stamp. Fashion, though in a 
strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue 
gone to seed: it is a kind of posthTunous honor. It does 
not often caress the great, but the children of the great; 
it is a hall of the Past. It usually sets its face against 
the great of this hour. Great men are not commonly 
in its halls: thev are al)sent in the field: thev are work- 
ing, not triumphing. Fashion is made up of their 
children; of those, who, through the value and virtue of 
somebody, have acquired lustre to their name, marks 
of distinction, means of cultivation and generosity, 
and, in their physical organization, a certain health and 
excellence, which secures to them, if not the highest 
power to work, yet high power to enjoy. The class of 
powder, the working heroes, the Cortez, the Nelson, the 
Napoleon, see that this is the festivity and permanent 
celebration of such as they; that fashion is funded 
talent; is ^Mexico, Marengo, and Trafalgar beaten out 



104 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

thin; that the brilliant names of fashion run back to 
just such busy names as their own, fifty or sixty years 
ago. They are the sowers, their sons shall be the 
reapers, and their sons, in the ordinary course of things, 
must yield the possession of the harvest to new com- 
petitors with keener eyes and stronger frames. The 
city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, 
it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was 
imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and 
exploded long ago, but that it was reinforced from the 
fields. It is only country which came to town day before 
yesterday, that is city and court to-day. 

[8] Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable 
results. These mutual selections are indestructible. 
If they provoke anger in the least favored class, and 
the excluded majority revenge themselves on the ex- 
cluding minority, by the strong hand, and kill them, 
at once a new class finds itself at the top, as certainly 
as cream rises in a bowl of milk: and if the people 
vshould destroy class after class, until two men only 
were left, one of these would be the leader, and would 
be involuntarily served and copied by the other. You 
may keep this minority out of sight and out of mind, 
but it is tenacious of life, and is one of the estates of the 
realm. I am the more struck with this tenacity, when 
I see its work. It respects the administration of such 
unimportant matters, that we should not look for any 
durability in its rule. We sometimes meet men under 
some strong moral influence, as, a patriotic, a literary, 
a religious movement, and feel that the moral sentiment 
rules man and nature. We think all other distinc- 



MANNERS 105 

tions and ties will be slight and fugitive, this of caste 
or fashion, for example ; yet come from year to year, and 
see how permanent that is, in this Boston or New 
York Hfe of man, where, too, it has not the least coun- 
tenance from the law of the land. Not in Egj^^t or in 
India a firmer or more impassable line. Here are 
associations whose ties go over, and under, and through 
it, a meeting of merchants, a military corps, a college- 
class, a fire-club, a professional association, a political, 
a religious convention; — the persons seem to draw 
inseparably near; yet, that assembly once dispersed, 
its members w^ill not in the year meet again. Each 
returns to his degree in the scale of good society, 
porcelain remains porcelain, and earthen earthen. 
The objects of fashion may be frivolous, or fashion 
may be objectless, but the nature of this union and 
selection can be neither frivolous nor accidental. 
Each man's rank in that perfect graduation depends on 
some sjTiimetry in his structure, or some agreement 
in his structure to the symmetry of society. Its doors 
unbar instantaneously to a natural claim of their own 
kind. A natural gentleman finds his way in, and will 
keep the oldest patrician out, who has lost his intrinsic 
rank. Fashion understands itself; good-breeding and 
personal superiority of whatever coimtry readily frater- 
nize with those of every other. The chiefs of savage 
tribes have distinguished themselves in London and 
Paris, by the purity of their tournure. 

[9] To say what good of fashion we can, — it rests 
on reality, and hates nothing so much as pretenders; — 
to exclude and mystify pretenders, and send them into 



106 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

everlasting ''Coventry/' is its delight. We contemn, 
in turn, every other gift of men of the worM; but the 
habit even in little and the least matters, of not appeal- 
ing to any but our own sense of propriety, constitutes 
the foundation of all chivalry. There is almost no 
kind of self-reliance, so it be sane and proportioned, 
vhicli fashion does not occasionally adopt, and give 
it the freedom of its saloons. A sainted soul is always 
elegant, and, if it will, passes unchallenged into the 
most guarded ring. But so will Jock the teamster 
pass, in some crisis that brings him thither, and find 
favor, as long as his head is not giddy vritli the new cir- 
cumstance, and the iron shoes do not wish to dance in 
waltzes and cotillons. For there is nothing settled in 
manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy 
of the individual. The maiden at her first ball, the 
countr^TQan at a city dinner, believes that there is a 
ritual according to which every act and compliment 
must be performed, or the failing party must be cast 
out of this presence. Later, they learn that good sense 
and character make their own forms every moment, 
and speak or abstain, take wine or refuse it, stay or go, 
sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the floor, or 
stand on their head, or what else soever, in a new and 
aboriirinal way: and that strong will is always in fashion, 
let who will be unfashionable. .All that fashion de- 
mands is composure, and self -content. A cii'cle of men 
perfectly well-bred would be a company of sensible 
persons, in which every man's native manners and 
character appeared. If the fashionist have not this 
quality, he is nothing. We are such lovers of self-reli- 



MANNERS 107 

ance, that we excuse in a man many sins, if he will show 
us a complete satisfaction in his position, which asks no 
leave to be, of mine, or any man's good opinion. But any 
deference to some eminent man or woman of the world, 
forfeits all privilege of nobility. He is an underling: I 
have nothing to do ^\ ith 1 um ; I will speak with his master. 
A man should not go where he cannot carry his whole 
sphere or society with him, — not bodily, the whole 
circle of his friends, but atm^ospherically. He should 
preserve in a new company the same attitude of mind 
and reality of relation, which his daily associates draw 
him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will be 
an orphan in the merriest club. ^'If you could see 
Vich Ian Vohr with his tail on! — ^" But Vich Tan 
Vohr must always carry his belongings in some fashion, 
if not added as honor, then severed as disgrace. 

[10] There will always be in society certain persons 
who are mercuries of its approl)ation, and whose glance 
will at any time determine for the curious their standing 
in the w^orld. These are the chamberlains of the lesser 
gods. Accept their coldness as an omen of grace with the 
loftier deities, and allow them all their privilege. They 
are clear in their office, nor could they be thus formidable, 
without their own merits. But do not measure the 
importance of this class by their pretension, or imagine 
that a fop can be the dispenser of honor and shame. 
They pass also at their just rate; for how can they 
otherwise, in circles which exist as a sort of herald's 
office for the sifting of character? 

[11] As the first thing man requires of man is reality, 
so, that appears in all the forms of society. We point- 



108 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

edly, and by name, introduce the parties to each other. 
Know you before all heaven and earth, that this is 
Andrew, and this is Gregory; — they look each other 
in the eye; they grasp each other's hand, to identify 
and signalize each other. It is a great satisfaction. 
A gentleman never dodges: his eyes look straight for- 
ward, and he assures the other party, first of all, that 
he has been met. For what is it that we seek, in so 
many visits and hospitalities? Is it your draperies, 
pictures, and decorations? Or, do we not insatiably 
ask. Was a man in the house? I may easily go into a 
great household Avhere there is much substance, ex- 
cellent provision for comfort, luxury, and taste, and yet 
not encounter there any Amphitryon, who shall subor- 
dinate these appendages. I may go into a cottage, and 
find a farmer who feels that he is the man I have come 
to see, and fronts me accordingly. It was therefore a 
very natural point of old feudal etiquette, that a gentle- 
man who received a visit, though it were of his sovereign, 
should not leave his roof, but should wait his arrival 
at the door of his house. No house, though it were the 
Tuileries, or the Escurial, is good for amihing without 
a master. And yet we are not often gratified by this 
hospitality. Everybody we know surrounds himself 
with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, 
equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to inter- 
pose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem 
as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded 
nothing so much as a full rencontre front to front with 
his fellow? It were unmerciful, I know, quite to abolish 
the use of these screens, which are of eminent con- 



MANNERS 109 

venience, whether the guest is too great, or too little. 
We call together many friends who keep each other 
in play, or, by luxuries and ornaments we amuse the 
young people, and guard our retirement. Or if, per- 
chance, a searching realist comes to our gate, before 
whose eye ^^e have no care to stand, then again we run 
to our curtain, and hide ourselves as Adam at the voice 
of the Lord God in the garden. Cardinal Caprara, 
the Pope's legate at Paris, defended himself from the 
glances of Napoleon, by an immense pair of green 
spectacles. Napoleon remarked them, and speedily 
managed to rally them off: and yet Napoleon, in his 
turn, was not great enough with eight hundred thousand 
troops at his back, to face a pair of freeborn eyes, but 
fenced himself with etiquette, and within triple barriers 
of reserve: and, as all the world knows from Madame 
de Stael, was wont, when he found himself observed, 
to discharge his face of all expression. But emperors 
and rich men are by no means the most skilful masters 
of good manners. No rent-roll nor army-list can 
dignify skulking and dissimulation, and the first point 
of courtesy must always be truth, as really all the forms 
of good-breeding point that way. 

[12] I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's trans- 
lation, iNIontaigne's account of his journey into Italy, 
and am struck with nothing more agreeably than the 
self-respecting fashions of the time. His arrival in 
each place, the arrival of a gentleman of France, is 
an event of some consequence. Wherever he goes, 
he pays a visit to whatever prince or gentleman of 
note resides upon his road, as a duty to himself and to 



no EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

civilization. When he leaves any house in which he 
has lodged for a few weeks, he causes his arms to be • 
painted and hung up as a perpetual sign to the house, 
as was the custom of gentlemen. 

[13] The complement of this graceful self-respect, 
and that of all the points of good breeding I most require 
and insist upon, is deference. I like that every chair 
should be a throne, and hold a king. I prefer a tend- 
ency to stateliness, to an excess of fellowship. Let 
the incommunicable objects of nature and the meta- 
physical isolation of man teach us independence. 
I^et us not be too much acquainted. I would have a 
man enter his house through a hall filled with heroic 
and sacred sculptures, that he might not want the hint 
of tranquillity and self -poise. We should meet each 
morning, as from foreign countries, and spending the 
day together, should depart at night, as into foreign 
countries. In all things I would have the island of a 
man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking 
from peak to peak all around Olympus. Xo degree 
of affection need invade this religion. This is mjTrh 
and rosemary to keep the other sweet. Lovers should 
guard their strangeness. If they forgive too much, 
all slides into confusion and meanness. It is easy to push 
this deference to a Chinese etiquette; but coolness 
and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. 
A o'entleman makes no noise: a ladv is serene. Pro- 
portionate is our disgust at those invaders who fill a 
studious house with blast and nmning, to secure some 
paltry convenience. Not less I dislike a low sMnpathy 
of each with his neififhbor's needs. Must we have a 



i 



MANNERS 111 

good understanding with one another's palates? as 
foohsh people who have lived long together, know when 
each wants salt or sugar. I pray my companion, if he 
wishes for bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes 
for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not 
to hold out his plate, as if I knew already. Every 
natural function can be dignified by deliberation and 
privacy. Let us leave hurry to slaves. The compli- 
ments and ceremonies of our breeding should signify, 
however remotely, the recollection of the grandeur of 
our destinv. 

[14] The flower of courtesy does not very well bide 
handling, but if we dare to open another leaf, and ex- 
plore what parts go to its conformation, we shall find 
also an intellectual quality. To the leaders of men, the 
brain as well as the flesh and the heart must furnish a 
proportion. Defect in manners is usually the defect 
of fine perceptions. Men are too coarsely made for 
the delicacy of beautiful carriage and customs. It is 
not quite sufficient to good breeding, a union of kind- 
ness and independence. We imperatively require a 
perception of and a homage to beauty in our compan- 
ions. Other virtues are in request in the field and 
workyard, but a certain degree of taste is not to be 
spared in those we sit with. " I could better eat with one 
who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a 
sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities! 
tule the world, but at short distances the senses are' 
j^espotic. The same discrimination of fit and fair 
rims out, if with less rigor, into all parts of life. The 
average spirit of the energetic class is good sense, acting 



112 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

under certain limitations and to certain ends. It 
entertains every natural gift. Social in its nature, 
it respects everjihing which tends to unite men. It 
delights in measure. The love of beauty is mainly 
the love of measure or proportion. The person who 
screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses 
with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If 
you wish to be loved, love measure. You must have 
genius, or a prodigious usefulness, if you will hide the 
want of measure. This perception comes in to polish 
and perfect the parts of the social instruments. So- 
ciety will pardon much to genius and special gifts, 
but, being in its nature a convention, it loves w'hat 
is conventional, or what belongs to coming together. 
That makes the good and bad of manners, namely, 
what helps or hinders fellowship. For, fashion is not 
good sense absolute, but relative; not good sense private, 
but good sense entertaining company. It hates corners 
-and sharp points of character, hates quarrelsome, 
egotistical, solitary, and gloomy people; hates whatever 
can interfere w^ith total blending of parties; whilst 
it values all peculiarities as in the highest degree re- 
freshing, w^hich can consist wdth good fellowship. x\nd 
besides the general infusion of wdt to heighten civ'ility, 
the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome 
in fine society as the costliest addition to its rule and 
its credit. 

[15] The dry light must shine in to adorn our festival, 
but it must be tempered and shaded, or that wdll also 
offend. Accuracy is essential to beauty, and quick 
perceptions to politeness, but not too quick perceptions. 



MANNERS 113 

One may be too punctual and too precise. He must 
leave the omniscience of business at the door, when 
he comes into the palace of beauty. Society loves 
Creole natures, and sleepy, languishing manners, so 
that they cover sense, grace, and good will; the air of 
drowsy strength, which disarms criticism; perhaps 
because such a person seems to reserve himself for the 
best of the game, and not spend himself on surfaces; 
an ignoring eye, which does not see the annoyances, 
shifts and inconvenience, that cloud the brow and 
smother the voice of the sensitive. 

[16] Therefore, besides personal force and so much 
perception as constitutes unerring taste, society de- 
mands in its patrician class, another element already 
intimated, which it significantly terms good-nature, 
expressing all degrees of generosity, from the lowest 
willingness and faculty to oblige, up to the heights of 
magnanimity and love. Insight we must have, or we 
shall run against one another, and miss the way to 
our food; but intellect is selfish and barren. The 
secret of success in society, is a certain heartiness and 
sraipathy. A man who is not happy in the company 
cannot find any word in his memory that will fit the 
occasion. All his information is a little impertinent. 
A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of the 
conversation equally lucky occasions for the intro' 
duction of that which he has to say. The favorites of 
society and what it calls whole souls, are able men, and 
of more spirit than wit, who have no uncomfortable 
egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the company, 
contented and contenting, at a marriage or a funeral, 



114 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

a ball or a jury, a water-party or a shooting-match. 
England, which is rich in gentlemen, furnished, in the 
beginning of the present century, a good model of that 
genius which the world loves, in Mr. Fox, who added 
to his great abilities the most social disposition, and 
real love of men. Parliamentary history has few better 
passages than the debate in w^hich Burke and Fox 
separated in the House of Commons; when Fox urged 
on his old friend the claims of old friendship with such 
tenderness that the house was moved to tears. An- 
other anecdote is so close to my matter, that I must 
hazard the story. A tradesman who had long dunned 
him for a note of three hundred guineas, found him 
one day counting gold, and demanded payment. 
"No," said Fox, ''I ow^e this money to Sheridan: it 
is a debt of honor: if an accident should happen to 
me, he has nothing to show.'' ^'Then,'' said the 
creditor, "I change my debt into a debt of honor,'' 
and tore the note in pieces. Fox thanked the man for 
his confidence, and paid him, saying, '^his debt was of 
older standing, and Sheridan must wait." Lover of 
Liberty, friend of the Hindoo, friend of the African 
slave, he possessed a great personal popularity; and" 
Napoleon said of him on the occasion of his visit to 
Paris, in 1805, ^'Mr. Fox wdll alw^ays hold the first place 
in an assembly at the Tuileries." 

[17] We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy 
of courtesy, w^henever we insist on benevolence as its 
foundation. The painted phantasm Fashion rises 
to cast a species of derision on w^hat we say. But I 
will neither be driven from some allowance to Fashion 



MANNERS 115 

as a symbolic institution, nor from the belief that love 
is the basis of courtesy. We must obtain that, if we can; 
but by all means we must affirm this. Life owes much 
of its s])irit to these sharp contrasts. Fashion which 
affects to be honor is often, in all men's experience, 
only a ballroom-code. Yet, so long as it is the highest 
circle, in the imagination of the best heads on the planet, 
there is something necessary and excellent in it; for 
it is not to be supposed that men have agreed to be 
the dupes of an}i:hing preposterous; and the respect 
which these mysteries inspire in the most rude and 
sylvan characters, and the curiosity wdth which details 
of high life are read, betray the universality of the 
love of cultivated manners. I know^ that a comic dis- 
parity would be felt, if w^e should enter the acknowledged 
'first circles' and apply these terrific standards of justice, 
beauty, and benefit to the individuals actually found 
there. Monarchs and heroes, sages and lovers, these 
gallants are not. Fashion has many classes and many 
rules of probation and admission; and not the best 
alone. There is not only the right of conquest, which 
genius pretends, — -the individual, demonstrating his 
natural aristocracy best of the best; — ^but less c^laims 
will pass for the time; for Fashion loves lions, and 
points, like Circe, to her horned company. This 
gentleman is this afternoon arrived from Denmark; 
and that is my I^ord Ride, w^ho came yesterday from 
Bagdat; here is Captain Friese, from Cape Turnagain; 
and Captain Symmes, from the interior of the earth; 
and Monsieur Jovaire, who came down this morning 
in a balloon; Mr. Hobnail, the reformer; and Reverend 



116 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Jul Bat, who has converted the whole torrid zone in 
his Sunday-school; and Signor Torre del Greco, who 
extinguished Vesuvius by pouring into it the Bay of 
Naples; Spahi, the Persian ambassador; and Tul Wil 
Shan, the exiled nabob of Nepaul, whose saddle is the 
new moon. — But these are monsters of one day, and 
to-morrow will be dismissed to their holes and dens; 
for, in these rooms, every chair is waited for. The 
artist, the scholar, and, in general, the clerisy, wins its 
way up into these places, and gets represented here, 
somewhat on this footing of conquest. Another mode 
is to pass through all the degrees, spending a year and a 
day in St. Michael's Square, being steeped in Cologne 
water, and perfumed, and dined, and introduced, and 
properly grounded in all the biography, and politics, 
and anecdotes of the boudoirs. 

[18] Yet these fineries may have grace and wit. 
Let there be grotesque sculpture about the gates and 
offices of temples. I^et the creed and commandments 
even have the saucy homage of parody. The forms 
of politeness universally express benevolence in superla- 
tive degrees. What if they are in the mouths of selfish 
men, and used as means of selfishness? What if the 
false gentleman almost bows the true out of the world? 
What if the false gentleman contrives so to address his 
companion, as civilly to exclude all others from his 
discourse, and also to make them feel excluded? Real 
service will not lose its nobleness. All generosity 
is not merely French and sentimental; nor is it to be 
concealed, that living blood and a passion of kindness 
does at last distinguish God's gentleman from Fashion's. 



MANNERS 117 

The epitaph of Sir Jenkin Grout is not wholly unintelli- 
gible to the present age. ''Here lies Sir Jenkin Grout, 
who loved his friend, and persuaded his enemy: what 
his mouth ate, his hand paid for: what his servants 
robbed, he -restored: if a woman gave him pleasure, 
lie supported her in pain: he never forgot his children: 
and whoso touched his finger, drew after it his ^^'hole 
body/' Even the line of heroes is not utterly extinct. 
There is still ever some admirable person in plain 
clothes standing on the wharf, who jumps in to rescue 
a drowning man; there is still some absurd inventor of 
charities; some guide and comforter of runaway slaves; 
some friend of Poland; some Philhellene; some fanatic 
who plants shade-trees for the second and third genera- 
tion, and orchards when he is grown old; some well- 
concealed piety; some just man happy in an ill-fame; 
some youth ashamed of the favors of fortune, and impa- 
tiently casting them on other shoulders. And these 
are the centres of society, on which it returns for fresh 
impulses. These are the creators of Fashion, which is an 
attempt to organize beauty of behavior. The beautiful 
and the generous are, in the theory, the doctors and 
apostles of this church: Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir 
Philip Sidney, and Washington, and every pure and 
valiant heart, who worshipped Beauty by word and by 
deed. The persons who constitute the natural aris- 
tocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or 
only on its edge; as the chemical energy of the spectrum 
is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum. 
Yet that is the infirmity of the seneschals, who do not 
know their sovereign when he appears. The theory 



118 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

of society supposes the existence and sovereignty of 
these. It divines afar off their coming. It says with 
the elder gods, — 

As Heaven and Earth are fairer far 

Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs; 

And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth, 

In form and shape compact and beautiful; 

So, on our heels a fresh perfection treads; 

A power, more strong in beauty, born of us, 

And fated to excel us, as we pass 

In glory that old Darkness: 

for, 'tis the eternal law, 

That first in beauty shall be first in might. 

[19] Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good 
societv, there is a narrower and hic^her circle, concen- 
tration of its light, and flower of courtesy, to which 
there is alw^ays a tacit appeal of pride, and reference, 
as to its inner and imperial court, the parliament of 
love and chivalry. And this is constituted of those 
persons in whom heroic dispositions are native, with 
the love of beauty, the delight in society, and the power 
to embellish the passing day. If the individuals who 
compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, 
the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review, 
in such manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically 
inspect their behavior, we might find no gentleman, and 
no lady; for, although excellent specimens of courtesy 
and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, 
in the particulars, we should detect offence. Because 
elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth. There 
must be romance of character, or the most fastidious 
exclusion of impertinencies will not avail. It must be 



MANNERS 119 

genius which takes that direction: it must be not cour- 
teous, but courtesy. High behavior is as rare in fiction, 
as it is in fact. Scott is praised for the fidelity with 
which he painted the demeanor and conversation of the 
superior classes. Certainly, liings and queens, nobles 
and great ladies, had some right to complain of the 
absurdity that had been put in their mouths, before 
thedaysof Waverley; but neither does Scott's dialogue 
bear criticism. His lords brave each other in smaii: 
epigrammatic speeches, but the dialogue is in costume, 
and does not please on the second reading: it is not 
warm with life. In Shakspeare alone, the speakers 
do not strut and bridle, the dialogue is easily great, and 
he adds to so many titles that of being the best-bred 
man in England, and in Christendom. Once or twice 
in a lifetime we are permitted to enjoy the charm of 
noble manners, in the presence of a man or w^oman who 
have no bar in their nature, but whose character eman- 
ates freely in their word and gesture. A beautiful 
form is better than a beautiful face; a beautiful behavior 
is better than a beautiful form : it gives a higher pleasure 
than statues or pictures: it is the finest of the fine arts. 
A man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects of 
nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating from his 
countenance, he may abolish all considerations of 
magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty of 
the world. I have seen an individual, whose manners, 
though wholly within the conventions of elegant so- 
ciety, were never learned there, but were original and 
commanding, and held out protection and prosperity; 
one who did not need the aid of a court-suit, but carried 



120 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

the holiday in his eye; who exhilarated the fancy by 
flinging wide the doors of new modes of existence; who 
shook off the captivity of etiquette, with happy, spirited 
bearing, good-natured and free as Robin Hood; yet 
with the port of an empuror,— if need be, calm, serious, 
and fit to stand the gaze of millions. 

[20] The open air and the fields, the street and pub- 
lic chambers, are the places where Man executes his 
will; let him yield or divide the sceptre at the door of 
the house. Woman, with her instinct of behavior, 
instantly detects in man a love of trifles, any coldness 
or imbecility, or, in short, any want of that large, 
flowing, and magnanimous deportment, which is in- 
dispensable as an exterior in the hall. Our American 
institutions have been friendly to her, and at this 
moment, I esteem it a chief felicity of this country, 
that it excels in women. A certain awkward con- 
sciousness of inferiority in the men, may give rise to 
the new chivalry in behalf of Woman's Rights. Cer- 
tainly, let her be as much better placed in the laws 
and in social forms, as the most zealous reformer can 
ask, but I confide so entirely in her inspiring and 
musical nature, that 1 believe only herself can show 
us how she shall be served. The wonderful generosity/ 
of her sentiments raises her at times into heroical and 
godlike regions, and verifies the pictures of Minerva, 
Juno, or Polymnia; and, by the firmness with which _ 
she treads her upward path, she convinces the coarsest I 
calculators that another road exists, than that which ; 
their feet know. But besides those who make good ; 
in our imagination the place of muses and of Delphic i 



MANNERS 121 

Sibyls, are there not women who fill our vase with wine 
and roses to the brim, so that the wine runs over and 
fills the house with perfume; who inspire us with cour- 
tesy; who unloose our tongues, and we speak; who anoint 
our eyes, and we see? We say things we never thought 
to have said; for once, our walls of habitual reserve 
vanished, and left us at large; we were children play- 
ing with children in a wide field of flowers. Steep 
us, we cried, in these influences, for days, for weeks, 
and we shall be sunny poets, and will write out in 
many-colored words the romance that you are. Was 
it Hafiz or Firdousi that said of his Persian Lilla, She 
was an elemental force, and astonished me by her 
amount of life, when I saw her day after day radiating, 
every instant, redundant joy and grace on all around 
her. She was a solvent powerful to reconcile all 
heterogeneous persons into one society: like air or 
water, an element of such a great range of affinities, 
that it combines readily with a thousand substances. 
Where she is present, all others will be more than they 
are wont. She was a unit and whole, so that whatso- 
ever she did, became her. She had too much sympathy 
and desire to please, than that you could say, her man- 
ners were marked with dignity, yet no princess could 
surpass her clear and erect demeanor on each occasion. 
She did not study the Persian grammar, nor the books 
of the seven poets, but all the poems of the seven seemed 
to be written upon her. For, though the bias of her 
nature was not to thought, but to sMupathy, yet was 
she so perfect in her own nature, as to meet intellectual 
persons by the fulness of her heart, warming them by 



122 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

her sentiments; believing, as she did, that by dealing 1 
nobly with all, all would show themselves noble. « 

[21] I know that this Byzantine pile of chivalry or 
Fashion, which seems so fair and picturesque to those 
who look at the contemporary facts for science or 
for entertainment, is not equally pleasant to all spec- 
tators. The constitution of our society makes it a 
giant's castle to the ambitious youth who have not 
found their names enrolled in its Golden Book, and 
whom it has excluded from its coveted honors and 
privileges. They have yet to learn that its seeming 
grandeur is shadowy and relative: it is great by their 
allowance: its proudest gates will fly open at the 
approach of their courage and virtue. For the present 
distress, how^ever, of those who are predisposed to 
suffer from the tyrannies of this caprice, there are 
easy remedies. To remove your residence a couple 
of miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the 
most extreme susceptibility. For, the advantages 
w^hich fashion values, are plants which thrive in very 
confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of 
this precinct, they go for nothing; are of no use in the 
farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial 
society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in 
friendship, in the heaven of thought or ^'irtue. 

[22] But we have lingered long enough in these 
painted courts. The worth of the thing signified must 
vindicate our taste for the emblem. Ever}i:hing that 
is called fashion and courtesy humbles itself before 
the cause and fountain of honor, creator of titles and 
dignities, namely, the heart of love. This is the royal 



MANNERS 123 



blood, this is the lire, which, in all countries and con- 
tingencies, will work after its kind, and conquer and 
expand all that approaches it. This gives new mean- 
ings to every fact. This impoverishes the rich, suffer- 
ing no grandeur but its own. What is rich? Are you 
rich enough to help anybody? to succor the unfashion- 
able and the eccentric? rich enough to make the Cana- 
dian in his wagon, the itinerant with his consul's paper 
which commends him ^^To the charitable,^' the swarthy 
Italian with his few broken words of English, the lame 
pauper hunted by overseers from town to tow^n, even 
the poor insane or besotted wreck of man or w^oman, 
feel the noble exception of your presence and your 
house, from the general bleakness and stoniness; to 
make such feel that they were greeted with a voice which 
made them both remember and hope? What is vulgar, 
but to refuse the claim on acute and conclusive reasons? 
What is gentle, but to allow it, and give their heart 
and yours one holiday from the national caution? 
Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. 
The king of Schiraz could not afford to be so bounti- 
ful as the poor Osman who dwelt at his gate. Os- 
man had a humanity so broad and deep, that although 
his speech was so bold and free with the Koran, as to 
disgust all the dervishes, yet was there never a poor 
outcast, eccentric, or insane man, some fool who 
had cut off his beard, or who had been mutilated under 
a vow, or had a pet madness in his brain, but fled at 
once to him, — -that great heart lay there so sunny and 
hospitable in the centre of the country^ that it seemed 
as if the instinct of all sufferers drew them to his side. 



124 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

And the madness which he harbored, he did not share. 
Is not this to be rich? this only to be rightly rich? 

[23] But I shall hear without pain, that I play the 
courtier very ill, and talk of that which 1 do not well 
understand. It is easy to see, that what is called by 
distinction society and fashion, has good laws as well 
as bad, has much that is necessary, and much that is 
absurd. Too good for banning, and too bad for 
blessing, it reminds us of a tradition of the pagan 
mythology, in any attempt to settle its character. 'I 
overheard Jove, one day,' said Silenus, 'talking of 
destrojdng the earth; he said, it had failed; they were 
all rogues and vixens, who went from bad to worse, 
as fast as the days succeeded each other. Minerva 
said, she hoped not; they were only ridiculous little 
creatures, with this odd circumstance, that they had 
a blur, or indeterminate aspect, seen far or seen near; 
if you called them bad, they would appear so; if you 
called them good, they would appear so; and there 
was no one person or action among them, which 
would not puzzle her owl, much more all Olraipus, 
to know whether it was fundamentallv bad or 
good.' 



MANNERS 125 

QUESTIONS 

(Numbers refer to pages and paragraphs.) 

99 : 3. What does Emerson name as the first essential of a gentle- 
man? the second? the third? "The competition is transferred from 
war to politics and trade." This was written in 1841; is it more 
or less true to-day than it was then? 

102:6. How do manners originate? What purpose do they serve? 
Give an instance. 

103:7. Who make up the fashionable class, according to Emerson? 

106:9. What does Emerson say is the foundation of good man- 
ners? 

108: 11. What ideas in this paragraph are new to you? 

110:13. Select quotable sentences from this paragraph. 

111:14. "Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine percep- 
tions." Explain. Is this true? 

120:20. At what places in this paragraph does Emerson's style be- 
come almost poetical? 

124:23. What is the application of the fable? 



FRIENDSHIP. 

[1] We have a great deal more kindness than is ever 
spoken. Maugre all the selfishness that chills Uke 
east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed 
with an element of love like a fine ether. How many 
persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak 
to, whom yet we honor, and who honor us! How 
many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom, 
though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with I Read 
the language of these wandering eye-beams. The 
heart knoweth. 

[2] The effect of the indulgence of this hirnian affec- 
tion is a certain cordial exhilaration. In poetry and 
in common speech the emotions of benevolence and 
complacency which are felt towards others are likened 
to the material effects of fire; so swift, or much more 
swift, more active, more cheering, are these fine in- 
ward irradiations. From the highest degree of pas- 
sionate love to the lowest degree of good will, they 
make the sweetness of life. 

[3] Our intellectual and active powers increase with 
our affection. The scholar sits down to write, and 
all his years of meditation do not furnish him with 
one good thought or happy expression; but it is neces- 
sary to WTite a letter to a friend, — ^and forthwith troops 
of gentle thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, 
with chosen words. See, in any house where virtue 
and self-respect abide, the palpitation which the ap- 

126 



FRIENDSHIP 127 

proach of a stranger causes. A commended stranger 
is expected and announced, and an uneasiness betwixt 
pleasure and pain invades all the hearts of a household. 
His arrival almost brings fear to the good hearts that 
would welcome him. The house is dusted, all things 
fly into their places, the old coat is exchanged for the 
new, and they must get up a dinner if they can. Of a 
commended stranger, only the good report is told by 
others, only the good and new^ is heard by us. He 
stands to us for hum anity . He is what we wish. Having 
imagined and invested him, we ask how we should 
stand related in conversation and action with such a 
man, and are uneasy with fear. The same idea exalts 
conversation with him. We talk better than w^e are 
wont. We have the nimblest fancy, a richer memory, 
and our dumb devil has taken leave for the time. 
For long hours v^^e can continue a series of sincere, 
graceful, rich communications, drawn from the oldest, 
secretest experience, so that they who sit by, of our own 
kinsfolk and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise 
at our unusual powers. But as soon as the stranger 
begins to intrude his partialities, his definitions, his 
defects into the conversation, it is all over. He has 
heard the first, the last and best he will ever hear from 
us. He is no stranger now. Vulgarity, ignorance, 
misapprehension are old acquaintances. Now^, when 
he comes, he may get the order, the dress and the 
dinner, — -but the throbbing of the heart and the com- 
munications of the soul, no more. 

[4] Pleasant are these jets of affection which make 
a young W'Orld for me again. Delicious is a just and 



128 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

firm encounter of two, in a thought, In a feeling. 
How beautiful, on their approach to this beating heart, 
the steps and forms of the gifted and the true! The 
moment we indulge our affections, the earth is meta- 
morphosed: there is no winter and no night: all trage- 
dies, all ennuis vanish, — -all duties even; nothing fills 
the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant of 
beloved persons. I/ct the soul be assured that some- 
where in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it 
would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years. 
[5] I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiv- 
ing for my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not 
call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself 
so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, 
and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, 
the lovely and the noble-minded, as from time to time 
they pass my gate. Who hears me, who understands 
me, becomes mine, — a possession for all time. Nor is 
nature so poor but she gives me this joy several times, 
and thus we weave social threads of our own, a new 
web of relations; and, as many thoughts in succession 
substantiate themselves, we shall by-and-by stand in 
a new world of our own creation, and no longer strangers 
and pilgrims in a traditionary globe. My friends have 
come to me unsought. The great God gave them 
to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of \drtue 
with itself, I find them, or rather not I, but the Deity 
in me and in them, both deride and cancel the thick 
walls of individual character, relation, age, sex, cir- 
cumstance, at which he usually connives, and now 
makes many one. High thanks I owe you, excellent 



FRIENDSHIP 129 

lovers, who carry out the world for me to new and noble 
depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts. 
These are not stark and stiffened persons, but the new- 
born poetry of God, — ^poetry without stop, — >hymn, ode 
and epic, poetry still flowing and not yet caked in 
dead books with annotation and grammar, but Apollo 
and the Muses chanting still. Will these too separate 
themselves from me again, or some of them? I know 
not, but I fear it not; for my relation to them is so pure 
that we hold by simple affinity, and the Genius of 
my life being thus social, the same affinity will exert 
its energy on whomsoever is as noble as these men and 
women, wherever I may be. 

[6] I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on 
this point. It is almost dangerous to me to ^' crush 
the sweet poison of misused wine'' of the affections. 
A new person is to me always a great event and hinders 
me from sleep. I have had such fine fancies lately 
about^ two or three persons which have given me deli- 
cious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields no 
fruit. Thought is not born of it; my action is very little 
modified. I must feel pride in my friend's accomplish- 
ments as if they were mine, — -wild, delicate, throbbing 
property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is 
praised, as the lover when he hears applause of his 
engaged maiden. We over-estimate the conscience 
of our friend. His goodness seems better than our 
goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Every 
thing that is his, his name, his form, his dress, books 
and instruments, fancy enhances. Our own thought 
sounds new and larger from his mouth. 



130 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

[7] Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not 
without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. 
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too 
good to be believed. The lover, beholding his maiden, 
half knows that she is not verily that which he worships; 
and in the golden hour of friendship we are surprised 
with shades of suspicion and unbelief. We doubt 
that we bestow on our hero the virtues in which he 
shines, and afterwards worship the form to which we 
have ascribed this divine inhabitation. In strictness, 
the soul does not respect men as it respects itself. In 
strict science all persons underlie the same condition 
of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our 
love by facing the fact, by mining for the metaphysical 
foundation of this Elysian temple? Shall I not be 
as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear 
to know them for what they are. Their essence is not 
less beautiful than their appearance, though it needs 
finer organs for its apprehension. The root of the 
plant is not unsightly to science, though for chaplets 
and festoons we cut the stem short. And I must 
hazard the production of the bald fact amidst these 
pleasing reveries, though it should prove an Egyptian 
skull at our banquet. A man who stands united 
with his thought conceives magnificently of himself. 
He is conscious of a universal success, even though 
bought by uniform particular failures. No advantages, 
no powers, no gold or force, can be any match for him. 
I cannot choose but rely on my own poverty more than 
on your wealth. I cannot make your consciousness 
tantamount to mine. Onlv the star dazzles; the planet 



FRIENDSHIP 131 

has a faint, moon-like ray. I hear what you say of 
the admirable parts and tried temper of the party you 
praise, but I see well that, for all his purple cloaks, 
I shall not like him, unless he is at last a poor Greek 
like me. I cannot deny it, O friend, that the vast shadow 
of the Phenomenal includes thee also in its pied and 
painted immensity, — -thee also, compared with whom 
all else is shadow. Thou art not Being, as Truth is, 
as Justice is, — ^thou art not my soul, but a picture and 
effigy of that. Thou hast come to me lately, and 
already thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. Is it not 
that the soul puts forth friends as the tree puts forth 
leaves, and presently, by the germination of new buds, 
extrudes the old leaf? The law^ of nature is alternation 
forevermore. Each electrical state superinduces the 
opposite. The soul environs itself with friends that 
it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or soli- 
tude; and it goes alone for a season that it may exalt 
its conversation or society. This method betrays it- 
self along the whole history of our personal relations, 
the instinct of affection revives the hope of union with 
our mates, and the returning sense of insulation re- 
calls us from the chase. Thus every man passes his 
life in the search after friendship and if he should record 
his true sentiment, he might write a letter like this to 
each new candidate for his love: 

Dear Friend: If I was sure of thee, sure of thv 
capacity, sure to match my mood with thine, I should 
never think again of trifles in relation to thy comings 
and goings, I am not very wise: my moods are 
quite attainable: and I respect thy genius: it is to me 



132 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

as yet unf athomed ; yet dare I not presume in thee a 
perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a 
delicious torment. Thine ever, or never. 

[8] Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are 
for curiosity and not for life. They are not to be in- 
dulged. This is to weave cobweb, and not cloth. 
Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, 
because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, 
instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The 
la\ss of friendship are great, austere and eternal, of 
one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But 
we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a 
sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit 
in the whole garden of God, which many summers 
and many winters must ripen. • We seek our friend not 
sacredly, but ^ith an adulteracC passion T^ilich would 
appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. We are 
armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as 
soon as we meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry 
into stale prose. Almost all people descend to meet. 
All association must be a compromise, and, what is 
worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each 
of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach 
each other. What a perpetual disappointment is 
actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted! After 
interviews have been compassed with long foresight 
we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by 
sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit 
and of animal spirits, in the hey-dey of friendship and 
thought. Our faculties do not play us true, and both 
parties are relieved by solitude. 



FRIENDSHIP 133 

[9] I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes 
no difference how many friends I have and what 
content I can find in conversing with each, if there be 
one to whom I am not equal. If I have shrunk un- 
equal from one contest, instantly the joy I find in all 
the rest becomes mean and co^\'ardlv. I should hate 
myself, if then I made my other friends my asylum. 

The valiant warrior famoiised for fight, 
After a hundred victories, once foiled, 
Is from the book of honor razed quite 
And all the rest forgot for which he coiled. 

[10] Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. 
Bashfulness and apathy are a tough husk in ^\'hich a 
delicate organization is protected from premature 
ripening. If would be lost if it knew itself before any 
of the best souls were yet ripe enough to know and own 
it. Respect the natuiiangsamkeit which hardens the 
ruby in a million years, and works in duration in which 
Alps and Andes come and go as rainbows. The 
good spirit of our life has no heaven which is the price 
of rashness. Love, which is the essence of God, is 
not for levity, but for the total w^orth of man. Let us 
not have this childish luxury in our regards; but the 
austerest worth; let us approach our friend with an 
audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth, 
impossible to be overturned, of his foundations. 

[11] The attractions of this subject are not to be 
resisted, and I leave, for the time, all account of sub- 
ordinate social benefit, to speak of that select and 
sacred relation which is a kind of absolute, and which 
even leaves the language of love suspicious and com- 



134 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

mon, so much is this purer, and nothing is so much 
divine. 

[12] I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but 
with roughest courage. When they are real, they are 
not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing 
we know. For now, after so many ages of experience, 
what do we know of nature or of ourselves? Not 
one step has man taken toward the solution of the 
problem of his destiny. In one condemnation of 
folly stand the whole universe of men. But the sweet 
sincerity of joy and peace which I draw from this 
alliance with my brother's soul is the nut itself whereof 
all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell. 
Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might 
well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain 
him a single day. Happier, if he know the solemnity 
of that relation and honor its law! It is no idle bond, 
no holiday engagement. He who offers himself a 
candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Ohinpian, 
to the great games where the first-born of the world 
are the competitors. He proposes himself for contest 
where Time, Want, Danger, are in the lists, and he 
alone is victor who has truth enough in his constitution 
to preserve the delicacy of his beauty from the wear 
and tear of all these. The gifts of fortune may be 
present or absent, but all the hap in that contest de- 
pends on intrinsic nobleness and the contempt of trifles. 
There are two elements that go to the composition of 
friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no 
superiority in either, no reason why either should be 
first named. One is Truth. A friend is a person 



FRIENDSHIP 135 

with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may 
think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a 
man so real and equal that I may drop even those 
most undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, 
and second thought, which men never put ojff, and may 
deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with 
which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is 
the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to 
the highest rank, that being permitted to speak truth, 
as having none above it to court or conform unto. 
Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a 
second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend 
the approach of our fellow man by compliments, by 
gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our 
thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a 
man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this 
drapery, and omitting all compliment and common- 
place, spoke to the conscience of every person he en- 
countered, and that with great insight and beauty. 
At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was 
mad. But persisting, as indeed he could not help 
doing, for some time in this course, he attained to the 
advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance 
into true relations with him. No man would think 
of speaking falsely w^ith him, or of putting him off 
with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But 
every man was constrained by so much sincerity to 
face him, and what love of nature, what poetry, what 
S}Tiibol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. 
But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, 
but its side and its back. To stand in true relations 



136 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

with men In a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it 
not? We can seldom go erect. Almost every man 
we meet requires some civility, recjuires to be humored; 
— he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion 
or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, 
and which spoils all conversation with him. But a 
friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, 
but me. My friend gives me entertainment without 
requiring me to stoop, or to lisp, or to mask myself. 
A friend therefore is a sort of paradox in nature. I 
who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose 
existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, 
behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, 
variety and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so 
that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece 
of nature. 

[13] The other element of friendship is Tenderness. 
We are holden to men by every sort of tie, by blood, 
by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, 
by admiration, by every circumstance and badge and 
trifle, but we can scarce believe that so much char- 
acter can subsist in another as to draw^ us by love. 
Can another be so blessed and we so pure that we 
can offer him tenderness? When a man becomes 
dear to me I have touched the goal of fortune. I 
find very little written directly to the heart of this 
matter in books. And yet I have one text which I 
cannot choose but remember. My author says, 
*'I offer myself faintly and bluntly to those whose I 
effectually am, and tender myself least to him to 
whom I am the most devoted.'' I wish that friend- 



FRIENDSHIP 137 

ship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. 
It must plant itself on the ground, before it walks 
over the moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen, 
before it is quite a cherub. We chide the citizen 
because he makes love a commodity. It is an ex- 
change of gifts, of useful loans; it is good neighbor- 
hood; it watches with the sick; it holds the pall at 
the funeral; and quite loses sight of the delicacies 
and nobility of the relation. But though we cannot 
find the god under this disguise of a sutler, yet on the 
other hand we cannot forgive the poet if he spins 
his thread too fine and does not substantiate his romance 
by the municipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity 
and pity. I hate the prostitution of the name of 
friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. 
I much prefer the company of ploughboys and tin- 
pedlars to the silken and perfumed amity which only 
celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous display, 
by rides in a curricle and dinners at the best taverns. 
The end of friendship is a commerce the most strict 
and homely that can be joined; more strict than any 
of which we have experience. It is for aid and com- 
fort through all the relations and passages of life and 
death. It is fit for serene days and graceful gifts 
and country rambles, but also for rough roads and 
hard fare, shipwreck, poverty and persecution. It 
keeps company with the sallies of the wit and the trances 
of religion. ^Ye are to dignify to each other the daily 
needs and offices of man's life, and embellish it by 
courage, wisdom and unity. It should never fall 
into something usual and settled, but should be alert 



138 EMERSON^S ESSAYS 

and Inventive and add rhviiie and reason to what 
was drudo;erv. 

[14] For perfect friendship may be said to require 
natures so rare and costly, so well tempered each and 
so happily adapted, and withal so circumstanced 
(for even in that particular, a poet says, love demands 
that the parties be altogether paired), that very seldom 
can its satisfaction be realized. It cannot subsist 
in its perfection, say some of those who are learned 
in this warm lore of the heart, betwixt more than two. 
I am not quite so strict in my terms, perhaps because I 
have never known so high a fellowship as others. 
1 please my imagination more with a circle of godlike 
men and women variously related to each other and 
between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. But I 
find this law^ of one to one peremptory for conversation, 
which is the practice and consummation of friendships^ 
Do not mix waters too much. The best mLc as ill 
as good and bad. You shall have very useful and 
cheerino^ discourse at several times with two several 
men, but let all three of you come together and you 
shall not have one new and hearty word. Two may 
talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in 
a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort. 
In good company there is never such discourse be- 
tween two, across the table, as takes place when you 
leave them alone. In good company the individuals 
at once merge their egotism into a social soul exactly 
coextensive vdth. the several consciousnesses there 
present. No partialities of friend to friend, no fond- 
nesses of brother to sister, of wife to husband, are 



FRIENDSHIP 139 

there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he may then 
speak who can sail on the common thought of the party, 
and not poorly limited to his own. Now this conven- 
tion, which good sense demands, destroys the high 
freedom of great conversation, which requires an abso- 
lute running of two souls into one. 

[15] No two men but being left alone with each 
other enter into simpler relations. Yet it is affinity 
that determines which two shall converse. Unrelated 
men give little joy to each other; will never suspect the 
latent powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great 
talent for conversation, as if it were a permanent 
property in some individuals. Conversation is an 
evanescent relation, — no more. A man is reputed to 
have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, 
say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse 
his silence wdth as much reason as they would blame 
the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun 
it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his 
thought he will regain his tongue. 

[16] Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt 
likeness and unlikeness that piques each with the 
presence of power and of consent in the other party. 
Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than 
that my friend should overstep, by a word or a look, 
his real sjTiipathy. I am equally baulked by antago- 
nism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant 
to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, 
is that the not mine is mine. It turns the stomach, 
it blots the daylight, where I looked for a manly 
furtherance or at least a manly resistance, to find a 



140 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side 
of your friend than his echo. The condition which 
high friendship demands is abihty to do without it. 
To be capable that high office requires great and 
sublime parts. There must be very two, before there 
can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, 
formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, 
before yet they recognise the deep identity which, 
beneath these disparities, unites them. 

[17] He only is fit for this society who is magnani- 
mous. He must be so to know its law. He must be one 
who is sure that o-reatness and c^oodness are alwavs 
economy. He must be one who is not switi: to inter- 
meddle with his fortunes. Let him not dare to in- 
termeddle Tvith this. Leave to the diamond its ages 
to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births of the 
eternal. Friendship demands a religious treatment. 
We must not be ^\'ilful, we must not provide. We 
talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self- 
elected. Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your 
friend as a spectacle. Of course if he be a man he 
has merits that are not yours, and that you cannot 
honor if you must needs hold him close to your person. 
Stand aside. Give those merits room. Let them 
mount and expand. Be not so much his friend that 
you can never know his peculiar energies, like fond 
mammas who shut up their boy in the house until 
he is almost grown a girl. Are you the friend of your 
friend's buttons, or of his thought? To a great heart 
he will still be a stranger in a thousand particulars, 
that he mav come near in the holiest irround. Leave 



FRIENDSHIP 141 

it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, and 
to suck a short and all-confounding pleasure, instead 
of the pure nectar of God. 

[18] Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long 
probation. Why should we desecrate noble and 
beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist on 
rash personal relations with your friend? Why go 
to his house, or know his mother and brother and 
sisters? Why be visited by him at your own? Are 
these things material to our covenant? I^eave this 
touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. 
A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, 
I want, but not news, nor pottage. I can get politics 
and chat and neighborly conveniences from cheaper 
companions. Should not the society of my friend be 
to me poetic, pure, universal and great as nature itself? 
Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison 
with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, 
or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook? 
I^et us not vilify, but raise it to that standard. That 
great defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien 
and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but 
rather fortify and enhance. Worship his superior- 
ities. Wish him not less by a thought, but hoard 
and tell them alL Guard him as thy great counter- 
part; have a princedom to thy friend. Let him be 
to thee forever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, 
devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be 
soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of the 
opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if 
the eye is too near. To mv friend I write a letter 



142 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

and from him I receive a letter. That seems to you 
a little. Me it suffices. It is a spiritual gift, worthy 
of him to give and of me to receive. It profanes 
nobody. In these warm lines the heart will trust it- 
self, as it will not to the tongue, and pour out the 
prophecy of a godlier existence than all the annals of 
heroism have yet made good. 

[19] Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as 
not to prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience 
for its opening. We must be our own before we can 
be another's. There is at least this satisfaction in 
crime, according to the Latin proverb; you can speak 
to your accomplice on even terms. Crimen quos 
inquinaty wqitat. To those whom we admire and 
love, at first we cannot. Yet the least defect of self- 
possession vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation. 
There can never be deep peace between two spirits, 
never mutual respect, until in their dialogue each 
stands for the whole world. 

[20] What is so great as friendship, let us carry with 
what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — • 
so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not 
interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should 
say to the select souls, or to say anything to such? 
No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and 
bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and 
wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. 
Wait, and thy soul shall speak. Wait until the neces- 
sary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and 
night avail themselves of your lips. The only money 
of God is God. He pays never with any thing less, 



FRIENDSHIP 143 

or any thing else. The only reward of virtue is virtue: 
the only way to have a friend is to be one. You shall 
not come nearer a man by getting into his house. 
If unlike, his soul only flees the faster from you, and 
you shall catch never a true glance of his eye. We see 
the noble afar off and they repel us; why should we 
intrude? Late, — very late, — ^we perceive that no 
arrangements, no introductions, no consuetudes or 
habits of society would be of any avail to establish 
us in such relations with them as we desire, — -but 
solely the uprise of nature in us to the same degree 
it is in them: then shall we meet as water with water: 
and if we should not meet them then, we shall not 
want them, for we are already they. In the last 
analysis, love is only the reflection of a man's own 
worthiness from other m.en. Men have sometimes 
exchanged names w^ith their friends, as if they would 
signify that in their friend each loved his own 
soul. 

[21] The higher the style we demand of friendship, 
of course the less easy to establish it with flesh and 
blood. We walk alone in- the world. Friends such 
as we desire are dreams and fables. But a sublime 
hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, 
in other regions of the universal power, souls are 
now acting, enduring and daring, which can love us 
and which we can love. We may congratulate our- 
selves that the period of nonage, of follies, of blun- 
ders and of shame, is passed in solitude, and when 
we are finished men we shall grasp heroic hands in 
heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you 



144 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with 
cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our 
impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances 
which no God attends. By persisting in your path, 
though you forfeit the little you gain the great. You 
become pronounced. You demonstrate yourself, so 
as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, 
and you draw to you the first-born of the world, — 
those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander 
in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar great 
show as spectres and shadows merely. 

[22] It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too 
spiritual, as if so we could lose any genuine love. 
Whatever correction of our popular views we make 
from insight, nature will be sure to bear us out in, 
and though it seem to rob us of some joy, will repay 
us with a greater. Let us feel if we will the absolute 
insulation of man. We are sure that we have all in 
us. We go to Europe, or we pursue persons, or we 
read books, in the instinctive faith that these will 
call it out and reveal us to ourselves. Beggars all. 
The persons are such as we; the Europe, an old faded 
garment of dead persons; the books, their ghosts. 
Let us drop this idolatry. Let us give over this men- 
dicancy. Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, 
and defy them, saying ^Who are you? Unhand me; 
I will be dependent no more.' Ah! seest thou not, 
O brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a 
higher platform, and only be more each other's be- 
cause we are more our own? A friend is Janus- 
faced: he looks to the past and the future. He is 



FRIENDSHIP 145 

the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of 
those to come. He is the harbinger of a greater 
friend. It is the property of the divine to be repro- 
ductive. 

[23] I do then with my friends as I do with my 
books. I would have them where I can find them, 
but I seldom use them. We must have society on our 
ow^n terms, and admit or exclude it on the slightest 
cause. I cannot afford to speak much with my friend. 
If he is great he makes me so great that I cannot 
descend to converse. In the great days, presentiments 
hover before me, far before me, in the firmament. I 
ought then to dedicate myself to them. I go in that 
I may seize them, I go out that I may seize them. I 
fear only that I may lose them receding into the sky 
in which now they are only a patch of brighter light. 
Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot afford to 
talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose my 
own. It w^ould indeed give me a certain household 
joy to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy 
or search of stars, and come down to warm sym- 
pathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn 
always the vanishing of my mighty gods. It is true, 
next week I shall have languid times, w^hen I can 
well afford to occupy myself with foreign objects; 
then I shall regret the lost literature of your mind, 
and wash you were by my side again. But if you 
come, perhaps you vdW fill my mind only with new" 
visions; not with yourself but wdth your lustres, and 
I shall not be able any more than now to converse 
with you. So I will owe to my friends this evanes- 



146 , EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

cent intercourse. I will receive from them not what 
they have but what they are. They shall give me 
that which properly they cannot give me, but which 
emanates from them. But they shall not hold me by 
any relations less subtle and pure. We will meet as 
though w^e met not, and part as though we parted 
not. 

[24] It has seemed to me lately more possible than 
I knew, to carry a friendship greatly on one side, with- 
out due correspondence on the other. Why should 
I -cumber myself with the poor fact that the receiver 
is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that 
some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful 
space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. 
Let your greatness educate the crude and cold com- 
panion. If he is unequal he will presently pass away; 
but thou art enlarged by thy own shining, and no 
longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and 
burn with the gods of the empyrean. It is thought a 
disgrace to love unrequited. But the great will see 
that true love cannot be unrequited. True love 
transcends instantly the unworthy object and dwells 
and broods on the eternal, and when the poor inter- 
posed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of 
so much earth and feels its independency the surer. 
Yet these things may hardly be said without a sort of 
treachery to the relation. The essence of friendship 
is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It 
must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats 
its object as a god, that it may deify both. 



FRIENDSHIP 147 

QUESTIONS 

(Numbers refer to pages and paragraphs.) 

126:3. Does Emerson in this essay write with more or less feel- 
ing than in the preceding one? 

128:5. Judging from the essay thus far, how does Emerson's con- 
ception of friendship compare with the usual view? 

134:12. Where in this paragraph does the style become suffused 
with emotion? Select one or more quotable sentences. 

141:18. Would you be satisfied with a friendship such as is 
described in the first part of this paragraph? W^hat would be the 
advantages of it? 

What are the best paragraphs in the essay? 

What have you learned from this essay about Emerson himself? 

How would you compare this essay with ones previously studied? 

What new ideas have you gained from it? 

Do you agree entirely with Emerson's views on friendship? 



HEROISM. 

Paradise is under the shadow of swords. 

— Mahomet. 

[1] In the elder English dramatists, and mainly in 
the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a constant 
recognition of gentility, as if a noble behavior were 
as easily marked in the society of their age as color 
is in our American population. When any Rodrigo, 
Pedro or Valerio enters, though he be a stranger, the 
duke or governor exclaims, ^This is a gentleman,' 
and proffers civilities without end; but all the rest are 
slao; and refuse. In harmony with this delioht in 
personal advantages there is in their plays a certain 
heroic cast of character and dialogue, — as in Bon- 
duca, Sophocles, the ]Mad Lover, the Double ]Mar-* 
riage, — wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial 
and on such deep grounds of character, that the dia- 
logue, on the slightest additional incident in the plot, 
rises naturally into poetry, .\mong many texts take 
the following. The Roman Martins has conquered 
Athens, — ^all but the invincible spirits of Sophocles, the 
duke of Athens, and Dorigen, his wife. The beauty 
of the latter inflames ^^lartius, and he seeks to save 
her husband; but Sophocles will not ask his life, al- 
though assured that a word will save him, and the 
execution of both proceeds: — 

148 



HEROISM 149 

Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell. 

Soph. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, 
Yonder, above, ^bout Ariadne's crown, 
My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste. 

Dor. Stay, Sophocles, — with this tie up my sight; 
Let not soft nature so transformed be. 
And lose her gentler sexed humanity, 
To make me see my lord bleed. So, 'tis well; 
Never one object underneath the sun 
Will I behold before my Sophocles: 
Farewell; now teach the Romans how to die. 

Mar. Dost know what 'tis to die? 

Soph. Thou dost not, Martins, 
And, therefore, not what 'tis to live; to die 
Is to begin to live. It is to etid 
An old, stale, weary work and to commence 
A newer and a better. 'Tis to leave 
Deceitful knaves for the society 
Of gods and goodness. Thou thyself must part 
At last from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs, 
And prove thy fortitude what then 'twull do. 

Val. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life 
thus? 

Soph. Why should I grieve or vex for being sent 
To them I ever loved best? Now I'll kneel. 
But with my back toward thee: 'tis the last duty 
This trunk can do the gods. 

Mar. Strike, strike, Valerius, 
Or Martins' heart will leap out at his mouth. 
This is a man, a woman. Kiss thy lord. 
And live with all the freedom you were wont. 
O love! thou doubly hast afflicted me 
With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart, 
My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn. 
Ere thou transgress this knot of piety. 

Val. What ails my brother? 

Sovh. Martins, O Martins, 



150 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Thou now hast found a way to conquer me. 

Dor. O star of Rome! what gratitude can speak 
Fit words to follow such a deed as this? 

Mar. This admirable duke, Valerius, 
With his disdain of fortune and of death 
Captived himself, has captivated me. 
And though my arm hath ta'en his body here. 
His soul hath subjugated Martins' soul. 
By Romulus, he is all soul, I think; 
He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved, 
Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free, 
And Martins walks now in captivity. 

[2] I do not readily remember any poem, play, 
sermon, novel or oration that our press vents in the 
last few years, which goes to the same tune. ^Ye 
have a o-reat many flutes and flao-eolets, but not often 
the sound of any fife. Yet Wordsworth's ''Laodamia,'' 
and the ode of "Dion,^' and some sonnets, have a 
certain noble music; and Scott will sometimes draw 
a stroke like the portrait of Lord Evandale given by 
Balfour of Burley. Thomas Carlyle, with his natural 
taste for what is manly and daring in character, has 
suffered no heroic trait in his favorites to drop from 
his biographical and historical pictures. Earlier, 
Robert Burns has given us a song or two. In the 
Harleian Miscellanies there is an account of the battle 
of Lutzen which deserves to be read. And Simon 
Ockley's History of the Saracens recounts the prodigies 
of individual valor, with admiration all the more evi- 
dent on the part of the narrator that he seems to think 
that his place in Christian Oxford requires of him 
some proper protestations of abhorrence. But if 



HEROISM 151 

we explore the literature of Heroism We shall quickly 
come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. 
To him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epam- 
inondas, the Scipio of old, and I must think we are more 
deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. 
Each of his ''Lives'' is a refutation to the despondency 
and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. 
A wild courage, a stoicism not of the schools but of the 
blood, shines in every anecdote, and has given that 
book its immense fame. 

[3] We need books of this tart cathartic virtue more 
than books of political science or of private economy. 
Life is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook 
and chimney-side of prudence, it wears a ragged and 
dangerous front. The violations of the laws of nature 
by our predecessors and our contemporaries are pun- 
ished in us also. The disease and deformity around us 
certify the infraction of natural, intellectual and moral 
laws, and often violation on violation to breed such 
compound misery. A lockjaw that bends a man's 
head back to his heels; hydrophobia that makes him 
bark at his w^ife and babes; insanity that makes him 
eat grass; war, plague, cholera, famine, indicate a 
certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by 
human crime, must have its outlet by human suffering. 
Unhappily almost no man exists who has not in his 
own ])erson become to some amount a stockholder in 
the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the 
expiation. 

[4] Our culture therefore must not omit the arming 
of the man. Let him hear in season that he is born 



152 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

into the state of war, and that the commonwealth and 
his own well-being require that he should not go danc- 
ing in the w^eeds of peace, but warned, self-collected 
and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him 
take both reputation and life in his hand, and with 
perfect urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob by the 
absolute truth of his speech and the rectitude of his 
behavior. 

[5] Towards all this external evil the man within the 
breast assumes a warlike attitude, and affirms his 
ability to cope single-handed with the infinite army 
of enemies. To this military attitude of the soul we 
give the name of Heroism. Its rudest form is the con- 
tempt for safety and ease, which makes the attractive- 
ness of war. It is a self-trust which slights the restraints 
of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and power 
to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind 
of such balance that no disturbances can shake his 
will, but pleasantly and as it were merrily he advances 
to his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the 
tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness. There is some- 
what not philosophical in heroism; there is some- 
what not holy in it; it seems not to know that other 
souls are of one texture with it; it hath pride; it is the 
extreme of individual nature. Nevertheless we must 
profoundly revere it. There is somewhat in great 
actions which does not allow us to go behind them. 
Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always 
right; and although a different breeding, different 
religion and greater intellectual activity would have 
modified or even reversed the particular action, yet 



HEROISM 153 

for th6 hero that thing he does Is the highest deed, and 
IS not open to the censure of philosophers or divines. 
It is the avowal of the unschooled man that he finds 
a quality in him that is negligent of expense, of health, 
of life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, and that he 
knows that his will is higher and more excellent than 
all actual and all possible antagonists. 

[6] Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of 
mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice 
of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a 
secret impulse of an individuars character. Now to 
no other man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, 
for every man must be supposed to see a little farther 
on his own proper path than any one else. Therefore 
just and wise men take umbrage at his act, until after 
some little time be past : then they see it to be in unison 
with their acts. All ]:)rudent men see that the action 
is clean contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic 
act measures itself by its contempt of some external 
good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the 
prudent also extol. 

[7] Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the 
state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the 
last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to 
bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks 
the truth and it is just. It is generous, hospitable, 
temperate, scornful of petty calculations and scornful 
of being scorned. It persists; it is of an undaunted 
boldness and of a fortitude not to be wearied out. Its 
jest is the littleness of common life. That false pru- 
dence which dotes on health and wealth is the foil, the 



154 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

butt and merriment of heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus 
is almost ashamed of its body. What shall it say then 
to the sugar-plums and cats'-cradles, to the toilet, com- 
pliments, quarrels, cards and custard, which rack the 
wit of all human society? What joys has kind nature 
provided for us dear creatures I There seems to be no 
interval between greatness and meanness. When the 
spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe. Yet 
the little man takes the great hoax so innocently, works 
in it so headlong and believing, is born red, and dies 
gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his o^vn health, 
Jaj-ing traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his 
heart on a horse or a rifle, made happy with a little 
gossip or a little praise, that the great soul cannot choose 
but laugh at such earnest nonsense. ^^ Indeed, these 
himible considerations make me out of love with great- 
ness. What a diso:race is it to me to take note how 
many pairs of silk stockings thou hast, namely, these, 
and those that were the peach-colored ones; or to bear 
the inventory of thy shirts, as one for superfluity, and 
one other for use." 

[8] Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, 
consider the inconvenience of receiving strangers at 
their fireside, reckon narrowly the loss of time and the 
unusual display: the soul of a better quality thrusts 
back the unseasonable economy into the vaults of 
life, and says, I will obey the God, and the sacrifice 
and the fire he will provide. Ibn Hankal, the Arabian 
geographer, describes a heroic extreme in the hospital- 
ity of Sogd, in Bukharia. ''^^'hen I was in Sogd I saw 
a ^reat building, like a palace, the gates of which were 



i 



HEROISM 155 

open and fixed back to the wall with large nails. I 
asked the reason, and was told that the house had not 
been shut, night or day, for a hundred years. Strangers 
may present themselves at any hour and in whatever 
number; the master has amply provided for the recep- 
tion of the men and their animals and is never happier 
than when they tarry for some time. Nothing of the 
kind have I seen in any other country.'' The magnani- 
mous know very \\'ell that they who give time, or 
money, or shelter, to the stranger, — so it be done for 
love and not for ostentation, — do, as it were, put God 
under obligation to them, so perfect are the compensa- 
tions of the universe. In some wav the time thev seem 
to lose is redeemed and the pains they seem to take 
remunerate themselves. These men fan the flame of 
human love ,and raise the standard of civil virtue 
among mankind. But hospitality must be for service 
and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave 
soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor 
of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and 
all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace 
to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts. 
[9] The temperance of the hero proceeds from the 
same wish to do no dishonor to the worthiness he has. 
But he loves it for its elegancy, not for its austerity. 
It seems not worth his while to be solemn and denounce 
w^ith bitterness flesh-eating or wine-drinking, the use 
of tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, or gold. A great 
man scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses, 
but without railing or precision his living is natural 
and poetic. John Eliot, the Indian Apostle, drank 



156 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

water, and said of wine, ''It is a noble, generous liquor 
and we should be humbly thankful for it, but, as I 
remember, water was made before it/' Better still 
is the temperance of King David, who poured out on 
the ground unto the Lord the w^ater which three of his 
warriors had brought him to drink, at the peril of their 
lives. 

[10] It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his 
sword after the battle of Philippi, he quoted a line of 
Euripides, ''O Virtue! I have followed thee through 
life, and I find thee at last but a shade." I doubt not 
the hero is slandered by this report. The heroic soul 
does not sell its justice and its nobleness. It does not 
ask to dine nicely and to sleep w^arm. The essence of 
greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. 
Poverty is its ornament. Plenty does not need it, and 
can very well abide its loss. 

[11] But that which takes my fancy most in the heroic 
class, is the good-humor and hilarity they exhibit. It 
is a height to w^hich conmion duty can very well attain, 
to suffer and to dare wdth solemnity. But these rare 
souls set opinion, success, and life at so cheap a rate 
that they wdll not soothe their enemies by petitions, or 
the show of sorrow, but wear their ow^n habitual great- 
ness. Scipio, charged wdth peculation, refuses to do 
himself so great a disgrace as to wait for justification, 
though he had the scroll of his accounts in his hands, 
but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. Socrates's 
condemnation of himself to be maintained in all honor 
in the Prytaneum, during his life, and Sir Thomas 
More's playfulness at the scaffold, are of the same 



HEROISM 157 

strain. In Beaumont and Fletchers ''Sea Voyage/' 

Juletta tells the stout captain and his company, — 

JiiL Why, slaves, 't is in our power to hang ye. 
Master. Very likely, 

'T is in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye. 

These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the bloom 
and glow of a perfect health. The great will not con- 
descend to take any thing seriously; all must be as gay 
as the song of a canary, though it were the buildiilg of 
cities or the eradication of old and foolish churches 
and nations which have cumbered the earth long 
thousands of years. Simple hearts put all the history 
and customs of this world behind them, and play their 
own play in innocent defiance of the Blue-Laws of the 
world; and such would appear, could we see the human 
race assembled in vision, like little children frolicking 
together, though to the eyes of mankind at large they 
wear a stately and solemn garb of works and influences. 
[12] The interest these fine stories have for us, the 
power of a romance over the boy who grasps the for- 
bidden book under his bench at school, our delight in 
the hero, is the main fact to our purpose. All these 
great and transcendent properties are ours. If we 
dilate in beholding the Greek energy, the Roman pride, 
it is that we are already domesticating the same senti- 
ment. Let us find room for this great guest in our 
small houses. The first step of worthiness will be to 
disabuse us of our superstitious associations with places 
and times, with number and size. Why should these 
words, Athenian, Roman, Asia and England, so tingle 
in the ear? I^et us feel that where the heart is, there 



158 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geo- 
graphy of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River 
and Boston Bay you think paltry places, and the ear 
loves names of foreign and classic topography. But 
here we are: — that is a great fact, and, if we will tarry 
a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See 
to it only that thyself is here, — and art and nature, 
hope and dread, friends, angels and the Supreme Being 
shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest. 
Epaminondas, brave and affectionate, does not seem 
to us to need Olympus to die upon, nor the Syrian 
sunshine. He lies very well where he is. The Jerseys 
were handsome ground enough for Washington to 
tread, and London streets for the feet of Milton. A 
great man illustrates his place, makes his climate genial 
in the imagination of men, and its air the beloved ele- 
ment of all delicate spirits. That country is the fairest 
which is inhabited by the noblest minds. The pictures 
which fill the imagination in reading the actions of 
Pericles, Xenophon, Columbus, Bayard, Sidney, Hamp- 
den, teach us how needlessly mean our life is; that we, 
by the depth of our living, should deck it with more 
than regal or national splendor, and act on principles 
that should interest man and nature in the length of 
our days. 

[13] We have seen or beard of many extraordinary 
yoimg men who never ripened, or whose performance 
in actual life was not extraordhiary. When we see 
their air and mien, when we hear them speak of society, 
of books, of religion, we admire their superiority; they 
seem to throw contempt on the whole state of the world; 



HEROISM 159 

theirs is the tone of a youthful giant who is sent to 
work revolutions. But they enter an active profession 
and the forming Colossus shrinks to the common size 
of man. The magic they used was the ideal tendencies, 
which always makes the Actual ridiculous; but the 
tough world has its revenge the moment they put their 
horses of the sun to plough in its furrow. They found 
no example and no companion, and their heart fainted. 
What then? The lesson they gave in their first aspira- 
tions is yet true; and a better valor and a purer truth 
shall one day execute their will and put the world to 
shame. Or why should a woman liken herself to any 
historical woman, and think, because Sappho, or 
Sevigne, or De Stael, or the cloistered souls who have 
had genius and cultivation do not satisfy the imagina- 
tion and the serene Themis, none can, — certainly not 
she. Whj^ not? She has a new and unattempted 
problem to solve, perchance that of the happiest nature 
that ever bloomed. Let the maiden, with erect soul, 
walk serenely on her way, accept the hint of each new 
experience, try in turn all the gifts God offers her that 
she may learn the power and the charm that like a new 
dawn radiating of the deep of space, her new-born being 
is. The fair girl who repels interference by a decided 
and proud choice of influences, so careless of pleasing, 
so wilful and lofty, inspires every beholder with some- 
what of her own nobleness. The silent heart encour- 
ages her; O friend, never strike sail to a fear. Come 
into port greatly, or sail with God the seas. Not in 
vain you live, for every passing eye is cheered and 
refined by the vision. 



160 EMERSON^S ESSAYS 

\^ 

[14] The characteristic^ of genuine heroism is its per- 
sistency. All men have wandering impulses), fits and 
starts of generosity. \ But when you have resolved to 
be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to 
reconcile vourself with the w^orld. The heroic cannot 
be the conmion, nor the common the heroic. Yet we 
have the weakness to expect the sympathy of people in 
those actions w^hose excellence is that they outrun 
sjTiipathy and appeal to a tardy justice. If you would 
serve your brother, because it is fit for you to serve himj^ 
do not take back your words when you find that pru- 
dent people do not commend you.\Be true to your ow^n 
act, and congratulate yourself if you have done some- 
thing strange and extravagant and broken the monotony 
of a decorous age. It was a high counsel that I once 
heard given to a young person, ''Always do w^hat you 
are afraid to do.'" A simple manly; character \ need 
never make an apology, but should regard its past action 
with the calmness of Phocion, w hen he admitted that 
the event of the battle was happy^, yet did not regret 
his dissuasion from the battle. 

[15] There is no weakness or exposure for w^hich we 
cannot find consolation in the thought, — this is a part 
of my constitution, part of my relation and ofiice to 
my fellows-creature. Has nature covenanted with me 
that I should never appear to disadvantage, never 
make a ridiculous figure? Let us be generous of our 
dignity as w^ell as of our money. Greatness once and 
for ever has done wdth opinion. We tell our charities, 
not because w^e wish to be praised for them, not because 
we think they have great merit, but for our justification. 



HEROISM 161 

it is a capital blunder; as you discover when another 
man recites his charities. 

[16] To speak the truth, even with some austerity, 
to live with some rigor of temperance, or some extremes 
of generosity, seems to be an asceticism which common 
good nature would appoint to those who are at ease 
and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with 
the great multitude of suffering men. And not only 
need we breathe and exercise the soul by assuming the 
penalties of abstinence, of debt, of solitude, of unpopu- 
larity, but it behoves the wise man to look with a bold 
eye into those rarer dangers which sometimes invade 
men, and to familiarize himself with disgusting forms 
of disease, with sounds of execration, and the vision of 
violent death. 

[17] Times of heroism are generally times of terror, 
but the day never shines in which this element may 
not work. The circumstances of man, we say, are 
historically somewhat better in this country and at this 
hour than perhaps ever before. More freedom exists 
for culture. It will not now run against an axe at the 
first step out of the beaten track of opinion. But 
whoso is heroic will always find crises to try his edge. 
Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, 
and the trial of persecution always proceeds. It is but 
the other day that the brave Love joy gave his breast to 
the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free speech and 
opinion, and died when it was better not to live. 

[18] I see not any road of perfect peace which a man 
can walk, but to take counsel of his own bosom. Let 
him quit too much association, let him go home much, 



162 EMERSOX^S ESSAYS 

and stablish himself in those courses he approves. 
The unremitting retention of simple and high senti- 
ments in obscure duties is hardening the character to 
that temper which will work wdth honor, if need be in 
the tumult, or on the scaffold. Whatever outrages 
have happened to men may befall a man again: and 
very easily in a republic, if there appear any signs of a 
decay of religion. Coarse slander, fire, tar and feathers 
and the gibbet, the youth may freely bring home to his 
mind and with what sweetness of temper he can, and 
inquire hovv fast he can fix his sense of duty, V)raving 
such penalties, whenever it may please the next news- 
paper and a sufficient number of his neighbors to pro- 
nounce his opinions incendiary. 

[19] It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the 
most susceptible heart to see hoAV quick a bound Nature 
has set to the utmost infliction of malice. AYe rapidly 
approach a brink over w^hich no enemy can follow us. 

Let them rave: 
Thou art quiet in thy grave. 

In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in the 
hour when we are deaf to the higher voices, who does 
not envy them who have seen safely to an end their 
manful endeavor? ^Yho that sees the meanness of our 
politics but inly congratulates Washington that he is 
long already wrapped in his shroud, and for ever safe; 
that he was laid sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity 
not yet subjugated in himJ Who does not sometimes 
envy the good and brave who are no more to suffer 
from the tumults of the natural world, and await with 
curious complacency the speedy term of his own con- 



HEROISM 163 

versation with finite nature? And yet the love that 
will be annihilated sooner than treacherous has already 
made death impossible, and affirms itself no mortal but 
a native of the deeps of absolute and inextinguishable 
being. 

QUESTIONS 

(Numbers refer to pages and paragraphs.) 

148:1. Does this essay begin directly with the subject? If not, 
where is this reached? 

151:4. In what sense is every man born into a state of war? 

152:5. What is Emerson's definition of heroism? 

153:6. What further definition of heroism do you find here? 

153:7. What quahty added here? 

155:9. What further quahty of heroism? 

156:11. What quahty is added here? 

157:12. Select a sentence which expresses the main thought of 
this paragraph. 

161:17. "Whoso is heroic wiU always find crises to try his edge.'* 
Name any cause to-day that it requires some heroism to advocate. 

162: 19. "The meanness of our politics," etc. Is this true to-day? 



CHARACTER. 

The sun set; but set not his hope: 
Stars rose; his faith was earher up: 
Fixed on the enormous galaxy, 
Deeper and older seemed his eye: 
And matched his sufferance sublime 
The taciturnity of time. 
He spoke, and words more soft than rain 
Brought the Age of Gold again: 
His action won such reverence sweet, 
As hid all measure of the feat. 



Work of his hand 

He nor commends nor grieves : 

Pleads for itself the fact; 

As unrepenting Nature leaves 

Her every act. 

[1] I have read that those who listened to Lord Chat- 
ham felt that there was something finer in the man, 
than anything which he said. It has been complained 
of our brilliant English historian of the French Revolu- 
tion, that when he has told all his facts about Mirabeau, 
they do not justify his estimate of his genius. The 
Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and others of Plutarch's 
heroes, do not in the record of facts equal their own. 
fame. Sir Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter 
Raleigh, are men of great figure, and of few deeds. We 
cannot find the smallest part of the personal weight 
of Washington, in the narrative of his exploits. The 
authority of the name of Schiller is too great for his 

164 



CHARACTER 165 

books. This inequality of the reputation to the works 
or the anecdotes, is not accounted for by saying that 
the reverberation is longer than the thunder-clap; but 
somewhat resided in these men which begot an expecta- 
tion that outran all their performance. The largest 
part of their power was latent. This is that which we 
call Character, — a reserved force which acts directly 
by presence, and without means. It is conceived of 
as a certain undemonstrable force, a Familiar or Genius, 
by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels 
he cannot impart; which is company for him, so that 
such men are often solitary, or if they chance to be 
social, do not need society, but can entertain themselves 
very well alone. The purest literary talent appears at 
one time great, at another time small, but character is 
of a stellar and undiminishable greatness. What others 
effect by talent or by eloquence this man accomplishes 
by some magnetism. ''Half his strength he put not 
forth." His victories are by demonstration of superior- 
ity, and not by crossing of bayonets. He conquers, 
because his arrival alters the face of affairs. '''O lole! 
how did you know that Hercules was a god?' 'Be- 
cause,' answ^ered lole, 'I w^as content the moment my 
eyes fell on him. When I beheld Theseus, I desired 
that I might see him offer battle, or at least guide his 
horses in the chariot-race; but Hercules did not wait 
for a contest; he conquered whether he stood, or walked, 
or sat, or w^hatever thing he did.'" Man, ordinarily a 
pendant to events, only half attached, and that awk- 
wardly, to the world he lives in, in these exam])les 
appears to share the life of things, and to be an expres- 



166 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

sion of the same laws which control the tides and the 
sun, numbers and quantities. 

[2] But to use a more modest illustration, and nearer 
home, I observe, that in our political elections, where 
this element, if it appears at all, can only occur in its 
coarsest form, we sufficiently understand its incompar- 
able rate. The people know that they need in their 
representative much more than talent, namely, the 
power to make his talent trusted. They cannot come 
at their ends by sending to Congress a learned, acute, 
and fluent speaker, if he be not one who, before he 
was appointed by the people to represent them, was 
appointed by Almighty Grod to stand for a fact, — 
invincibly persuaded of that fact in himself, — so that 
the most confident and the most violent persons learn 
that here is resistance on which both impudence and 
terror are wasted, namely, faith in a fact. The men 
w^ho carry their points do not need to inquire of their 
constituents what they should say, but are themselves 
the country which they represent: nowhere are its 
emotions or opinions so instant and true as in them; 
nowhere so pure from a selfish infusion. The con- 
stituency at home hearkens to their words, watches the 
color of their cheek, and therein, as in a glass, dresses 
its ow^n. Our public assemblies are pretty good tests 
of manly force. Our frank countrymen of the west and 
south have a taste for character, and like to know 
whether the New Englander is a substantial man, or 
w^hether the hand can pass through him. 

[3] The same motive force appears in trade. There 
are geniuses in trade, as well as in war, or the state. 



' 



CHARACTER 167 

or letters; and the reason why this or that man is 
fortunate, is not to be told. It lies in the man: that 
is all anybody can tell you about it. See him, and 
you will know as easily why he succeeds, as, if you see 
Napoleon, you would comprehend his fortune. In the 
new objects we recognize the old game, the habit of 
fronting the fact, and not dealing with it at second- 
hand, through the perceptions of somebody else. Nature 
seems to authorize trade, as soon as you see the natural 
merchant, w^ho appears not so much a private agent 
as her factor and iNIinister of Commerce. His natural 
probity combines with his insight into the fabric of 
society, to put him above tricks, and he communicates 
to all his own faith, that contracts are of no private 
interpretation. The habit of his mind is a reference 
to standards of natural equity and public advantage; 
and he inspires respect, and the wish to deal w'ith him, 
both for the quiet spirit of honor which attends him, 
and for the intellectual pastime which the spectacle 
of so much ability affords. This immensely stretched 
trade, which makes the capes of the Southern Ocean 
his wharves, and the Atlantic Sea his familiar port, 
centres in his brain only; and nobody in the universe 
can make his place good. In his parlor, I see very 
well that he has been at hard work this morning, with 
that knitted brow, and that settled humor, which all 
his desire to be courteous cannot shake off. I see 
plainly how many firm acts have been done; how" many 
valiant noes have this day been spoken, when others 
would have uttered ruinous yeas. I see, with the pride 
of art, and skill of masterly arithmetic and power of 



168 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

remote combination, the consciousness of being an 
agent and play-fellow of the original laws of the w^orld. 
He too believes that none can supply hun, and that a 
man must be born to trade, or he cannot learn it. 

[4] This virtue draws the mind more, when it appears 
in action to ends not so mixed. It works with most 
energy in the smallest companies and in private rela- 
tions. In all cases, it is an extraordinary and incom- 
putable agent. The excess of physical strength is 
paralyzed by it. Higher natures overpower lower 
ones by affecting them w^ith a certain sleep. The facul- 
ties are locked up, and offer no resistance. Perhaps 
that is the universal law. When the high cannot bring 
up the low to itself, it benumbs it, as man charms down 
the resistance of the lower animals. Men exert on 
each other a similar occult power. How often has the 
influence of a true master realized all the tales of magic ! 
A river of command seemed to run down from his eyes 
into all those who beheld him, a torrent of strong sad 
light, like an Ohio or Danube, which pervaded them 
with his thoughts, and colored all events with the hue 
of his mind. ''What means did you employ?" was the 
question asked of the wife of Concini, in regard to 
her treatment of Mary of Medici and the answer 
w^as, ''Only that influence which every strong mind has 
over a weak one.'' Cannot Caesar in irons shuffle off 
the irons, and transfer them to the person of Hippo or 
Thraso the turnkey? Is an iron handcuff so immutable 
a bond? Suppose a slaver on the coast of Guinea 
should take on board a gang of negroes, which should 
contain persons of the stamp of Toussaint L'Ouverture: 



CHARACTER 169 

or, let us fancy, under these swarthy masks he has a gang 
of Washingtons in chains. When they arrive at Cuba 
will the relative order of the ship's company be the 
same? Is there nothing but rope and iron? Is there 
no love, no reverence? Is there never a glimpse of 
right in a poor slave-captain's mind; and cannot these 
be supposed available to break, or elude, or in any 
manner overmatch the tension of an inch or two of 
iron ring? 

[5] This is a natural power, like light and heat, and 
all nature cooperates with it. The reason why we feel 
one man's presence, and do not feel another's, is as 
simple as gravity. Truth is the summit of being: 
justice is the application of it to affairs. All individual 
natures stand in a scale, according to the purity of this 
element in them. The will of the pure runs down from 
them into other natures, as water runs down from a 
higher into a lower vessel. This natural force is no 
more to be withstood, than any other natural force. 
We can drive a stone upward for a moment into the 
air, but it is yet true that all stones w^ill forever fall; 
and whatever instances can be quoted of unpunished 
theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, justice must 
prevail, and it is the privilege of truth to make itself 
believed. )/ Character is this moral order seen through 
the medium of an individual nature. An individual 
is an encloser. Time and space, liberty and necessity, 
truth and thought, are left at large no longer. Now, 
the universe is a close or pound. All things exist in 
the man tinged with the manners of his soul. With 
what quality is in him, he infuses all nature that he 



170 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

can reach; nor does he tend to lose himself in vastness, 
but, at how long a curve soever, all his regards return 
into his own good at last. He animates all he can, 
and he sees only what he animates. He encloses the 
world, as the patriot does his country, as a material 
basis for his character, and a theatre for action. A 
healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, 
as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he 
stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt 
them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the 
sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the 
medium of the highest influence to all who are not on 
the same level. Thus men of character are the con- 
science of the society to which they belong. 

[6] The natural measure of this power is the resist- 
ance of circumstances. Impure men consider life as 
it is reflected in opinions, events, and persons. They 
cannot see the action, until it is done. Yet its moral 
element pre-existed in the actor, and its quality as 
right or wrong, it was easy to predict. Ever\i:hing in 
nature is bipolar, or has a positive and negative pole. 
There is a male and a female, a spirit and a fact, a 
north and a south. Spirit is the positive, the event is 
the negative. Will is the north, action the south pole. 
Character may be ranked as having its natural place 
in the north. It shares the magnetic currents of the 
system. The feeble souls are drawn to the south or 
negative pole. They look at the profit or hurt of the 
action. They never behold a principle until it is lodged 
in a person. They do not wish to be lovely, but to be 
loved. The class of character like to hear of their 



CHARACTER 171 

faults: the other class do not like to hear of faults; they 
worship events; secure to them a fact, a connection, a 
certain chain of circumstances, and they will ask no 
more. The hero sees that the event is ancillary: it 
must follow him. A given order of events has no power 
to secure to him the satisfaction which the imagination 
attaches to it; the soul of goodness escapes from any 
set of circumstances, whilst prosperity belongs to a 
certain mind, and will introduce that power and victory 
which is its natural fruit, into any order of events. No 
change of circumstances can repair a defect of character. 
We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; 
but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer 
of the idolatry. What have I gained, that I no longer 
immolate a bull to Jove, or to Neptune, or a mouse to 
Hecate; that I do not tremble before the Eumenides, 
or the Catholic Purgatory, or the Calvinistic Judgment- 
day,— if 1 quake at opinion, the public opinion, as we 
call it; or at the threat of assault, or contumely, or bad 
neighbors, or poverty, or mutilation, or at the rumor 
of revolution, or of murder? If I quake, what matters 
it what I quake at? Our proper vice takes form in 
one or another shape, according to the sex, age, or 
temperament of the person, and, if we are capable of 
fear, will readily find terrors. The covetousness or 
the malignity which saddens me, when I ascribe it to 
society, is my OAvn. I am always environed by myself. 
On the other part, rectitude is a perpetual victory, cele- 
brated not by cries of joy, but by serenity, which is 
joy fixed or habitual. It is disgraceful to fly to events 
for confirmation of our truth and worth. T*he capital- 



172 EMERSOX'S ESSAYS 

ist does not run every hour to the broker, to coin his 
advantages into current money of the realm ; he is satis- 
fied to read in the quotations of the market, that his 
stocks have risen. The same transport which the 
occurrence of the best events in the best order would 
occasion me, I must learn to taste purer in the percep- 
tion that my position is every hour meliorated, and 
does already command those events I desire. That 
exultation is only to be checked by the foresight of an 
order of things so excellent, as to throw all our pros- 
perities into the deepest shade. 

[7] The face which character wears to me is self- 
sufficingness. I revere the person who is riches; so 
that I cannot think of him as alone, or poor, or exiled, 
or unhappy, or a client, but as perpetual patron, bene- 
factor, and beatified man. Character is centrality, the 
impossibility of being displaced or overset. A man 
should give us a sense of mass. Society is frivolous, 
and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into 
ceremonies and escapes. But if I go to see an ingen- 
ious man, I shall think myself poorly entertained if he 
give me nimble pieces of benevolence and etiquette; 
rather he shall stand stoutly in his place, and let me 
apprehend, if it were only his resistance; know that I 
have encountered a new and positive quality; — great 
refreshment for both of us. It is much, that he does 
not accept the conventional opinions and practices. 
That nonconformity vdW remain a goad and remem- 
brancer, and every inquirer will have to dispose of him, 
in the first place. There is nothing real or useful that 
is not a seat of war. Our houses rins; with laughter and 



CHARACTER 173 

personal and critical gossip, but it helps little. But the 
uncivil, unavailable man, who is a problem and a 
threat to society, whom it cannot let pass in silence, but 
m.ust either worship or hate, — and to whom all parties 
feel related, both the leaders of opinion, and the obscure 
and eccentric, — he helps; he puts America and Europe 
in the wTong, and destroys the scepticism which says, 
/'man is a doll, let us eat and drink, 'tis the best we 
can do," by illuminating the untried and unknown. 
Acquiescence in the establishment, and appeal to the 
public, indicate infirm faith, heads which are not clear, 
and which must see a house built, before they can com- 
prehend the plan of it. The wise man not only leaves 
out of his thought the many, but leaves out the few. 
Fountains, fountains, the self-moved, the absorbed, the 
commander because he is commanded, the assured, the 
primary, — they are good; for these announce the in- 
stant presence of supreme power. 

[8] Our action should rest mathematically on our 
substance. In nature, there are no false valuations. 
A pound of water in the ocean-tempest has no more 
gravity than in a midsummer pond. All things work 
exactly according to their quality, and according to 
their quantity; attempt nothing they cannot do, except 
man only. He has pretension : he wishes and attempts 
things beyond his force. I read in a book of English 
memoirs, ''Mr. Fox (afterwards Lord Holland) said, 
he must have the Treasury; he had served up to it, and 
would have it." — Xenophon and his Ten Thousand 
were quite equal to what they attempted, and did it; 
so equal, that it was not suspected to be a grand 



174 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

and inimitable exploit. Yet there stands that fact 
unrepealed, a high-water-mark in military history. 
Many have attempted it since, and not been equal to 
it. It is only on reality, that any power of action can 
be based. No institution will be better than the insti- 
tutor. I knew an amiable and accomplished person 
who undertook a practical reform, yet I was never able 
to find in him the enterprise of love he took in hand. 
He adopted it by ear and by the understanding from 
the books he had been reading. All his action was 
tentative, a piece of the city carried out into the fields, 
and was the city still, and no new fact, and could not 
inspire enthusiasm. Had there been something latent 
in the man, a terrible undemonstrated genius agitating 
and embarrassing his demeanor, we had watched for 
its advent. It is not enough that the intellect should 
see the evils, and their remedy. We shall still post- 
pone our existence, nor take the ground to which w^e 
are entitled, whilst it is only a thought and not a spirit 
that incites us. We have not yet served up to it. 

[9] These are properties of life, and another trait is 
the notice of incessant gro^ih. Men should be in- 
telligent and earnest. They must also make us feel 
that they have a controlling happy future, opening 
before them, which sheds a splendor on the passing 
hour. The hero is misconceived and misreported: he 
cannot therefore wait to unravel any man's blunders: 
he is again on his road, adding new powers and honors 
to his domain, and new claims on your heart, which 
will bankrupt you, if you have loitered about the old 
things, and have not kept your relation to him, by 



CHARACTER 175 

adding to your wealth. New actions are the only 
apologies and explanations of old ones, which the noble 
can bear to offer or to receive. If your friend has 
displeased you, you shall not sit down to consider it, 
for he has already lost all memory of the passage, and 
has doubled his power to serve you, and, ere you can 
rise up again, will burden you with blessings. 

[10] We have no pleasure in thinking of a benevo- 
lence that is only measured by its works. Love is inex- 
haustible, and if its estate is wasted, its granary emptied, 
still cheers and enriches, and the man, though he sleep, 
seems to purify the air, and his house to adorn the 
landscape and strengthen the laws. People always 
recognize this difference. We know who is benevolent, 
by quite other means than the amount of subscription 
to soup-societies. It is only low merits that can be 
enumerated. Fear, when your friends say to you what 
you have done well, and say it through; but when they 
stand with uncertain timid looks of respect and half- 
dislike, and must suspend their judgment for years to 
come, you may begin to hope. Those who live to the 
future must always appear selfish to those who live 
to the present. Therefore it was droll in the good 
Riemer, who has written memoirs of Goethe, to make 
out a list of his donations and good deeds, as, so many 
hundred thalers given to Stilling, to Hegel, to Tischbein: 
a lucrative place found for Professor Voss, a post under 
the Grand Duke for Herder, a pension for Meyer, two 
professors recommended to foreign universities, &c., 
&c. The longest list of specifications of benefit 
would look very short. A man is a poor creature, if 



176 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

he is to be measured so. For all these, of course, are 
exceptions; and the rule and hodiernal life of a good 
man is benefaction. The true charity of Goethe is to 
be inferred from the account he gave Dr. Eckermann, 
of the way in which he had spent his fortune. ^'Each 
bon-mot of mine has cost a purse of gold. Half a 
million of my own money, the fortune I inherited, my 
salary, and the large income derived from my writ- 
ings for fifty years back, have been expended to 
instruct me in what I now know. I have besides 
seen," &c. 

[11] I own it is but poor chat and gossip to go to 
enumerate traits of this simple and rapid power, and 
we are painting the lightning with charcoal; but in 
these long nights and vacations, I like to console myself 
so. Nothing but itself can copy it. A word warm 
from the heart enriches me. I surrender at discretion. 
How death-cold is literary genius before this fire of 
life! These are the touches that reanimate my heavy 
soul, and give it eyes to pierce the dark of nature. I 
find, where I thought myself poor, there was I most 
rich. Thence comes a new intellectual exaltation, to 
be again rebuked by some new exhibition of character. 
Strange alternation of attraction and repulsion; Char- 
acter repudiates intellect, yet excites it; and character 
passes into thought, is published so, and then is ashamed 
before new flashes of moral worth. 

[12] Character is nature in the highest form. It is 
of no use to ape it, or to contend with it. Somewhat 
is possible of resistance, and of persistence, and of 
creation, to this power, which will foil all emulation. 



CHARACTER 177 

[13] This masterpiece is best where no hands but 
nature's have been laid on it. Care is taken that the 
greatly-destined shall slip up into life in the shade, 
with no thousand-eyed Athens to watch and blazon 
every new thought, every blushing emotion of young 
genius. Two persons lately, — very young children of 
the most high God, — have given me occasion for 
thought. When I explored the source of their sanc- 
tity, and charm for the imagination, it seemed as if 
each answered, *'From my non-conformity: I never 
listened to your people's law, or to what they call their 
gospel, and wasted my time. I was content with the 
simple rural poverty of my own; hence this sweetness: 
my work never reminds you of that; — is pure of that." 
And nature advertises me in such persons, that, in 
democratic America, she will not be democratized. 
How cloistered and constitutionally sequestered from 
the market and from scandal ! It was onlv this morn- 
ing, that I sent away some wild flowers of these wood- 
gods. They are a relief from literature, — these fresh 
draughts from the sources of thought and sentiment; 
as we read, in an age of polish and criticism, the first 
lines of written prose and verse of a nation. How 
captivating is their devotion to their favorite books, 
whether iEschylus, Dante, Shakspeare, or Scott, as 
feeling that they have a stake in that book: who touches 
that, touches them; — and especially the total solitude 
of the critic, the Patmos of thought from which he 
writes, in unconsciousness of any eyes that shall ever 
read this writing. Could they dream on still, as angels, 
and not wake to comparisons, and to be flattered : Yet 



17S EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, and 

wherever the vein of thought reaches down into the 
profound, there is no dancrer from vanity. Solemn 
friends will warn them of the dansrer of the head's 
being turned by the flourish of trumpets, but they can 
afford to smile. I remember the indignation of an 
eloquent Methodist at the kind admonitions of a Doctor 
of Divinity, — ''My friend, a man can neither be praised 
nor insulted." But forgive the counsels; they are very 
natural. I remember the thought which occurred to 
me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came 
to America, was, Have you been victimized in being 
brought hither? — or, prior to that, answer me this, 
*'Are you victimizable?^' 

[14] As 1 have said, nature keeps these sovereignties 
in her own hands, and however pertly our sermons 
and disciplines would divide some share of credit, 
and teach that the laws fashion the citizen, she goes 
her own gait, and puts the wisest in the T\Tong. She 
makes very light of gospels and prophets, as one who 
has a great many more to produce, and no excess of 
time to spare on any one. There is a class of men, 
indi^-iduals of wliich appear at long intervals, so emi- 
nently endowed with insight and ^^rtue, that they have 
been unanimously saluted as divine, and who seem to 
be an accumulation of that power we consider. Divine 
persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from 
Napoleon, they are victory organized. They are 
usually received with ill-will, because they are new, 
and because they set a bound to the exacrgeration that 
has been made of the personality of the last divine 



CHARACTER 179 

person. Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes 
two men alike. When we see a great man, we fancy 
a resemblance to some historical person, and predict 
the" sequel of his character and fortime, a result 
which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solve 
the problem of his character according to our prejudice, 
but only in his own high unprecedented way. Char- 
acter wants room; must not be crowded on by persons, 
nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs 
or on few occasions. It needs perspective, as a great 
building. It may not, probably does not, form rela- 
tions rapidly; and we should not require rash expla- 
nation, either on the popular ethics, or on our own, 
of its action. 

[15] I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think 
the Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood. 
Every trait which the artist recorded in stone, he had 
seen in life, and better than his copy. We^have seen 
many counterfeits, but we are born believers in great 
men. How easily we read in old books, when men 
werejew, of the smallest action of the patriarchs. We 
rejquire that a man should be so large and columnar 
in the landscape, that it should deserve to be recorded, 
that he arose, and girded up his loins, and departed 
to such a place. The most credible pictures are those 
of majestic men who prevailed at their entrance, and 
convinced the senses; as happened to the eastern 
magian who was sent to test the merits of Zertusht or 
Zoroaster. W'hen the Yunani sage arrived at Balkh, 
the Persians tell us, Gushtasp appointed a day on 
which the mobeds of everv countrv should assemble, 



180 EMERSON^S ESSAYS 

and a golden chair was placed for the Yunani sage. 
Then the beloved of Yezdam, the prophet Zertusht, 
advanced into the midst of the assembly. The Yunani 
sage, on seeing that chief, said, '*This form and this 
gait cannot lie, and nothing but truth can proceed 
from them.'' Plato said, it was impossible not to 
beheve in the children of the gods, ''though they should 
speak without probable or necessary arguments." I 
should think myself very unhappy in my associates, 
if I could not credit the best things in history. ''John 
Bradshaw," says Milton, "appears like a consul, from 
whom the fasces are not to deoart with the vear; so that 
not on the tribunal only but throughout his life, 
you would regard him as sitting in judgment upon 
kings." I find it more credible, since it is anterior 
information, that one man should hnoiv heaven, as the 
Chinese say, than that so many men should know^ the 
world "The virtuous prince confronts the gods, 
without any misgiving. He waits a hundred ages till 
a sage comes, and does not doubt. He who confronts 
the gods, without any misgiving, knows heaven; he 
who waits a hundred ages until a sage comes, without 
doubting, knows men. Hence the virtuous prince 
moves, and for ages shows empire the way." But 
there is no need to seek remote examples. He is a 
dull observer whose experience has not taught him the 
reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry. 
The coldest precisian cannot go abroad 'v\dthout en- 
countering inexplicable influences. One man fastens 
an eye on him, and the graves of the memory render 
up their dead; the secrets that make him wretched 



CHARACTER 181 

either to keep or to betray, must be yielded ; — another, 
and he cannot speak, and the bones of his body 
seem to lose their cartilage; the entrance of a friend 
adds grace, boldness, and eloquence to him; and there 
are persons, he cannot choose but remember, who gave 
a transcendant expansion to his thought, and kindled 
another life in his bosom. 

[16] What is so excellent as strict relations of amity, 
when they spring from this deep root? The sufficient 
reply to the sceptic, who doubts the power and the 
furniture of man, is in that possibility of joyful inter- 
course with persons, which makes the faith and practice 
of all reasonable men. I know nothing which life has 
to offer so satisfying as the profound good understand- 
ing which can subsist, after much exchange of good 
offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is 
sure of himself, and sure of his friend. It is a happi- 
ness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes 
politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap. For, 
when men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, 
a shower of stars, clothed wdth thoughts, with deeds, 
with accomplishments, it should be the festival of nature 
which all things announce. Of such friendship, love 
in the sexes is the first symbol, as all other things are 
symbols of love. Those relations to the best men, 
which, at one time, we reckoned the romances of youth, 
become, in the progress of the character, the most solid 
enjoyment. 

[17] If it were possible to live in right relations with 
men I — if we could abstain from asking anything of 
them, from asking their praise, or help, or pity, and 



182 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

content us with compelling them through the virtue 
of the eldest laws ! Could we not deal with a few per- 
sons, — with one person, — after the unwritten statutes, 
and make an experiment of their efficacy? Could we 
not pay our friend the compliment of truth, of silence, 
of forbearing? Need we be so eager to seek him? Tf 
we are related, we shall meet. It was a tradition of 
the ancient world, that no metamorphosis could hide 
a god from a god; and there is a Greek verse which 

runs, 

The Gods are to each other not unknown. 

Friends also follow the laws of divine necessitv; thev 
gravitate to each other, and cannot otherwise: — 

When each the other shall avoid 
Shall each by each be most enjoyed. 

Their relation is not made, but allowed. The gods 
must seat themselves without seneschal in our Olym- 
pus, and as they can install themselves by seniority 
divine. Society is spoiled if pains are taken, if the 
associates are brought a mile to meet. And if it be 
not society, it is a mischievous, low, degrading jangle, 
though made up of the best. All the greatness of each 
is kept back, and every foible in painful activity, as 
if the 01^\Tnpians should meet to exchange snuff-boxes. 
[18] Life goes headlong. We chase some flying 
scheme, or we are hunted by some fear or command 
behind us. But if suddenly we encounter a friend we 
pause; our heat and hurry look foolish enough; now 
pause, now possession, is required, and the power to 
swell the jnoment from the resources of the heart. 
The moment is all, in all noble relations. 



CHARACTER 183 

[19] A divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a 
friend is the hope of the heart. Our beatitude waits 
for the fullBlment of these two in one. The ages are 
opening this moral force. All force is the shadow or 
symbol of that. Poetry is joyful and strong, as it draws 
its inspiration thence. Men write their names on 
the world, as they are filled with this. History has 
been mean; our nations have been mobs; we have 
never seen a man: that divine form we do not yet know, 
but only the dream and prophecy of such: we do not 
know the majestic manners which belong to him, which 
appease and exalt the beholder. We shall one day see 
that the most private is the most public energy, that 
quality atones for quantity, and grandeur of character 
acts in the dark, and succors them who never saw it. 
What greatness has yet appeared, is beginnings and 
encouragements to us in this direction. The history, 
of those gods and saints which the world has written, 
and then worshipped, are documents of character. 
The ages have exulted in the manners of a youth who 
owed nothing to fortune, and who was hanged at the 
Tyburn of his nation, who, by the pure quality of his 
nature, shed an epic splendor around the facts of his 
death which has transfigured every particular into an 
universal s}Tiibol for the eyes of mankind. This great 
defeat is hitherto our highest fact. But the mind 
requires a \^ctory to the senses, a force of character 
which will convert judge, jury, soldier, and king; which 
will rule animal and mineral virtues, and blend with 
the courses of sap, of rivers, of winds, of stars, and of 
moral ao;ents. 



p 
184 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

[20] If we cannot attain at a bound to these grandeurs, 
at least, let us do them homage. In society, high 
advantages are set down to the possessor as disadvan- 
tages. It requires the more wariness in our private 
estimates. I do not forgive in my friends the failure 
to know a fine character, and to entertain it with thank- 
ful hospitality. When at last, that which we have 
always longed for is arrived, and shines on us with 
glad rays out of that far celestial land, then to be coarse, 
then to be critical, and treat such a visitant with the 
jabber and suspicion of the streets, argues a vulgarity 
that seems to shut the doors of heaven. This is con- 
fusion, this the right insanity, when the soul no longer 
knows its own, nor where its allegiance, its religion, 
are due. Is there any religion but this, to know that 
wherever in the wide desert of being the holy senti- 
ment we cherish has opened into a flower, it blooms 
for me? if none sees it I see it; I am aware, if I alone, of 
the greatness of the fact. Whilst it blooms, I will keep 
sabbath or holy time, and suspend my gloom, and my 
folly and jokes. Nature is indulged by the presence 
of this guest. There are many eyes that can detect 
and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are 
many that can discern Genius on his starry track, 
though the mob is incapable; but when that love which 
is all-suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has 
vowed to itself, that it will be a wretch and also a fool 
in this world, sooner than soil its white hands by any 
compliances, comes into our streets and houses, — only 
the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only 
compliment they can pay it, is to own it. 



CHARACTER 185 

QUESTIONS 

(Numbers refer to pages and paragraphs.) 

167 : 3. Is Emerson's estimate of the business man higher or lower 
than the usual view? 

169: 5. "Whatever instances can be quoted of unpunished theft or 
of a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail.'' In what 
previous essay do you find the same thought? 

170: 6. "Everything in nature is bi-polar, or has a positive and neg- 
ative pole." In what earlier essay was this thought developed? 
*M am always environed by myself." Explain. Is this true? 

174:9. Select a sentence for quotation. 

176: 11. Note the frequent figurative expressions in this paragraph. 

182:17. "If we are related, we shall meet." Compare Friend- 
ship, par. 5. 

183:19. Select a sentence for quotation. From this paragraph, 
what can you say of Emerson's ideals? Is he an optimist or a pes- 
simist? "A youth who owed nothing to fortune." Who is meant? 

184:20. How does the style of this paragraph differ from that of 
the rest of the essay? 



POLITICS. 

Gold and iron are good 

To buy iron and gold; 

All earth's fleece and food 

For their like are sold. 

Boded Merlin wise, 

Proved Xapoleon great, — 

Nor kind nor coinage buys 

Aught above its rate. 

Fear, Craft, and Avarice 

Cannot rear a State. 

Out of dust to build 

What is more than dust, — 

Walls Amphion piled 

Pha?bus stablish must. 

When the Muses nine 

With the Virtues meet, 

Find to their design 

An Atlantic seat, 

By green orchard boughs 

Fended from the heat, 

Where the statesman ploughs 

Furrow for the wheat; 

When the Church is social worth, 

When the state-house is the hearth, 

Then the perfect State is come, 

The republican at home. 

[1] In dealing with the State, we ought to remember 
that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they 
existed before we were born: that they are not superior 
to the citizen: that every one of them was once the act 

186 



POLITICS 187 

of a single man: every law and usage was a man's 
expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are 
imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may 
make better. Society is an illusion to the young citizen. 
It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain names, 
men, and institutions, rooted like oak-trees to the 
centre, round which all arrange themselves the best 
they can. But the old statesman knows that society 
is fluid; there are no such roots and centres; but any 
particle may suddenly become the centre of the move- 
ment, and compel the system to gyrate round it, as 
every man of strong will, like Pisistratus, or Cromw^ell, 
does for a time, and every man of truth, like Plato, 
or Paul, does forevei. But politics rests on necessary 
foundations, and cannot be treated with levity. Repub- 
lics abound in young civilians, who believe that the 
laws make the city, that grave modifications of the 
policy and modes of living, and employments of the 
population, that commerce, education, and religion, 
may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though 
it were absurd, may be imposed on a people, if only 
you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But 
the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, 
which perishes in the twisting; that the State must 
follow, and not lead the character and progress of the 
citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and 
they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and 
that the form of government which prevails, is the 
expression of what cultivation exists in the population 
which permits it. The law is only a memorandum. 
We are superstitious, and esteem the statute somewhat : 



188 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

so much life as it has in the character of living men, is 
its force. The statute stands there to say, yesterday 
we agreed so and so, but how feel ye this article to- 
day? Our statute is a currency, which we stamp with 
our own portrait: it soon becomes unrecognizable, and 
in process of time will return to the mint. Nature 
is not democratic, nor limited monarchical, but despotic, 
and will not be fooled or abated of any jot of her au- 
thority, by the pertest of her sons: and as fast as the 
public mind is opened to more intelligence, the code 
is seen to be brute and stammering. It speaks not 
articulately, and must be made to. Meantime the 
education of the general mind never stops. The 
reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What 
the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints 
to-day, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall 
presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall 
be carried as grievance and bill of rights through con- 
flict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and 
establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, 
in turn, to new prayers and pictures. The history 
of the State sketches in coarse outline the progress of 
thought, and follows at a distance the delicacy of cul- 
ture and of aspiration. 

[2] The theory of politics, which has possessed the 
mind of men, and which they have expressed the best 
they could in their laws and in their revolutions, con- 
siders persons and property as the two objects for 
whose protection government exists. Of persons, all 
have equal rights, in virtue of being identical in nature. 
This interest, of course, with its whole power demands 



POLITICS 189 

a democracy. Whilst the rights of all as persons are 
equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights 
in property are very unequal. One man owns his 
clothes, and another owns a county. This accident, 
depending, primarily, on the skill and virtue of the 
parties, of which there is every degree, and secondarily, 
on patrimony, falls unequally, and its rights, of course, 
are unequal. Personal rights, universally the same, 
demand a government framed on the ratio of the cen- 
sus: property demands a government framed on the 
ratio of owners and of owning. Laban, who has flocks 
and herds, wishes them looked after by an officer on 
the frontiers, lest the Midianites shall drive them off, 
and pays a tax to that end. Jacob has no flocks or herds, 
and no fear of the Midianites, and pays no tax to the 
officer. It seemed fit that Laban and Jacob should 
have equal rights to elect the officer, who is to defend 
their persons, but that Laban and not Jacob, should 
elect the officer who is to guard the sheep and cattle. 
And, if question arise whether additional oflScers or 
watch-towers should be provided, must not Laban 
and Isaac, and those who must sell part of their herds 
to buy protection for the rest, judge better of this, and 
with more right, than Jacob, who, because he is a 
youth and a traveller, eats their bread and not his own ? 

[3] In the earliest society the proprietors made their 
own wealth, and so long as it comes to the owners in 
the direct way, no other opinion would arise in any 
equitable community, than that property should make 
the law for property, and persons the law for persons. 

[4] But property passes through donation or inherit- 



190 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

ance to those who do not create it. Gift, in one case, 
makes it as really the new owner's, as labor made it 
the first owTier's: in the other case, of patrimony, the 
law makes an ownership, which will be valid in each 
man's \dew according to the estimate which he sets 
on the public tranquillity. 

[5] It was not, however, found easy to embody the 
readily admitted principle, that property should make 
law for property, and persons for persons: since per- 
sons and property mixed themselves in every trans- 
action. At last it seems settled, that the rightful 
distinction was, that the proprietors should have 
more elective franchise than non-proprietors, on the 
Spartan principle of "calling that which is just, equal; 
not that which is equal, just.'' 

[6] That principle no longer looks so self e\'ident as 
it appeared in former times, partly, because doubts 
have arisen whether too much weight had not been 
allowed in the laws, to property, and such a structure 
given to our usages, as allowed the rich to encroach 
on the poor, and to keep them poor; but mainly, 
because there is an instinctive sense, however obscure 
and yet inarticulate, that the whole constitution of 
property, on its present tenures, is injurious, and its 
influence on persons deteriorating and degrading; 
that truly, the only interest for the consideration of 
the State, is persons; that property will always follow 
persons; that the highest end of government is the 
culture of men: and if men can be educated, the insti- 
tutions mil share their improvement, and the moral 
sentiment will write the law of the land. 



POLITICS 191 

[7] If it be not easy to settle the equity of this ques- 
tion, the peril is less when we take note of our natural 
defences. We are kept by better guards than the 
vigilance of such magistrates as we commonly electa 
Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and 
foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the 
hypocrisy of courts and statesmen, die, and leave no 
wisdom to their sons. They believe their own news- 
paper, as their fathers did at their age. \Yith such 
an ignorant and deceivable majority. States would 
soon run to ruin, but that there are limitations beyond 
which the folly and ambition of governors cannot go. 
Things have their laws, as well as men; and things 
refuse to be trifled with. Property will be protected. 
Corn will not grow, unless it is planted and manured; 
but the farmer vdW not plant or hoe it, unless the 
chances are a hundred to one, that he will cut and 
harvest it. Under any forms, persons and property 
must and will have their just sway. They exert their 
power, as steadily as matter its attraction. Cover up 
a pound of earth never so cunningly, divide and sub- 
di\ide it; melt it to liquid, convert it to gas; it will 
always weigh a pound: it will always attract and resist 
other matter, by the full virtue of one pound weight; 
— and the attributes of a person, his wit and his moral 
energy, will exercise, under any law or extinguishing 
tyranny, their proper force, — if not overtly, then 
covertly; if not for the law, then against it; with right, 
or by might. 

[8] The boundaries of personal influence it is im- 
possible to fix, as persons are organs of moral or super- 



192 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

natural force. Under the dominion of an idea which 
possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, 
or the religious sentiment, the powers of persons are 
no longer subjects of calculation. A nation of men 
unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest, can easily 
confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve ex- 
travagant actions, out of all proportion to their means; 
as, the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, 
and the French have done. 

[9] In like manner, to every particle of property 
belongs its own attraction. A cent is the representa- 
tive of a certain quantity of corn or other commodity. 
Its value is in the necessities of the animal man. It 
is so much warmth, so much bread, so much w^ater, 
so much land. The law may do what it will with the 
owner of property, its just power will still attach to 
the cent. The law may in a mad freak say, that all 
shall have power except the owners of property: they 
shall have no vote. Nevertheless, by a higher law, 
the property will, year after year, write every statute 
that respects property. The non-proprietor will be 
the scribe of the proprietor. What the owners w^ish 
to do, the whole power of property will do, either 
through the law, or else in defiance of it. Of course, 
I speak of all the property, not merely of the great 
estates. When the rich are outvoted, as frequently 
happens, it is the joint treasury of the poor which 
exceeds their accumulations. Every man owns some- 
thing, if it is only a cow, or a wheelbarrow, or his arms, 
and so has that property to dispose of. 

[10] The same necessity which secures the rights of 



POLITICS 193 

person and property against the malignity or folly of 
the magistrate, determines the form and methods of 
governing, which are proper to each nation, and to 
its habit of thought, and nowise transferable to other 
states of society. In this country, we are very vain 
of our political institutions, which are singular in this, 
that they sprung, within the memory of living men, 
from the character and condition of the people, which 
they still express with sufficient fidelity, — and we 
ostentatiously prefer them to any other in history. 
They are not better, but only fitter for us. We 
may be wise in asserting the advantage in modern 
times of the democratic form, but to other states of 
society, in which religion consecrated the monarchical, 
that and not this was expedient. Democracy is better 
for us, because the religious sentiment of the present 
time accords better with it. Born democrats, we are 
nowise qualified to judge of monarchy, which, to our 
fathers living in the monarchical idea, was also rela- 
tively right. But our institutions, though in coinci- 
dence with the spirit of the age, have not any exemption 
from the practical defects which have discredited 
other forms. Every actual State is corrupt. Good 
men must not obey the laws too well. What satire 
on government can equal the severity of censure con- 
veyed in the word folitic, which now for ages has signi- 
fied cunning y intimating that the State is a trick? 

[11] The same benign necessity and the same practi- 
cal abuse appear in the parties into which each State 
di\^des itself, of opponents and defenders of the adminis- 
tration of the government. Parties are also founded 



194 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

on instincts, and have better guides to their own humble 
aims than the sagacity of their leaders. They have 
nothing perverse in their origin, but rudely mark some 
real and lasting relation. We might as wisely reprove 
the east wind, or the frost, as a political party, whose 
members, for the most part, could give no account 
of their position, but stand for the defence of those 
interests in which they find themselves. Our quarrel 
with them begins, when they quit this deep natural 
ground at the bidding of some leader, and, obeying 
personal considerations, throw themselves into the 
maintenance and defence of points, nowise belonging 
to their system. A party is perpetually corrupted by 
personality. Whilst we absolve the association from 
dishonesty, we cannot extend the same character to 
their leaders. They reap the rewards of the docility and 
zeal of the masses which they direct. Ordinarily, 
our parties are parties of circumstance, and not of 
principle; as, the planting interest in conflict with the 
commercial; the party of capitalists, and that of oper- 
atives; parties which are identical in their moral 
character, and which can easily change ground with 
each other, in the support of many of their measures. 
Parties of principle, as, religious sects, or the party 
of free-trade, of universal suffrage, of abolition of 
slavery, of abolition of capital punishment, degenerate 
into personalities, or would inspire enthusiasm. The 
vice of our leading parties in this country (which may 
be cited as a fair specimen of these societies of opinion) 
is, that they do not plant themselves on the deep and 
necessary grounds to which they are respectively 



POLITICS 195 

entitled, but lash themselves to fury in the carrying 
of some local and momentary measure, nowise useful 
to the commonwealth. Of the two great parties, 
which, at this hour, almost share the nation between 
them, I should say, that one has the best cause, and 
the other contains the best men. The philosopher, 
the poet, or the religious man, will of course, w^ish to 
cast his vote with the democrat, for free-trade, for 
wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal cruelties in the 
penal code, and for facilitating in every manner the 
access of the young and the poor to the sources of 
wealth and power. But he can rarely accept the per- 
sons whom the so-called popular party propose to 
him as representatives of these liberalities. They have 
not at heart the ends which give to the name of democ- 
racy what hope and virtue are in it. The spirit of 
our American radicalism is destructive and aimless: 
it is not loving, it has no ulterior and divine ends; 
but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness. 
On the other side, the conservative party, composed 
of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the 
population, is timid, and merely defensive of property. 
It vindicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it 
brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy, it does 
not build, nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster 
religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science, 
nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or 
the Indian, or the immigrant. From neither party, 
when in power, has the world any benefit to expect in 
science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with 
the resources of the nation. 



196 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

[12] I do not for these defects despair of our republic. 
We are not at the mercy of any waves of chance. In 
the strife of ferocious parties, human nature always 
finds itself cherished, as the children of the convicts 
at Botany Bay are found to have as healthy a moral 
sentiment as other children. Citizens of feudal states 
are alarmed at our democratic institutions lapsing 
into anarchy; and the older and more cautious among 
ourselves are learning from Europeans to look with 
some terror at our turbulent freedom. It is said that 
in our license of construing the Constitution, and in 
the despotism of public opinion, we have no anchor; 
and one foreign observer thinks he has found the safe- 
guard in the sanctity of Marriage among us; and another 
thinks he has found it in our Calvinism. Fisher Ames 
expressed the popular security more wisely, when he 
compared a monarchy and a republic, saying, ''that 
a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but 
will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; 
whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, 
but then your feet are always in water.'' No forms 
can have any dangerous importance, whilst we are 
befriended by the laws of things. It makes no dif- 
ference how many tons weight of atmosphere presses 
on our heads, so long as the same pressure resists it 
within the lungs. Augment the mass a thousand fold, 
it cannot begin to crush us, as long as reaction is equal 
to action. The fact of two poles, of two forces, cen- 
tripetal and centrifugal, is universal, and each force 
by its own activity develops the other. Wild liberty 
develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strength- 



POLITICS 197 

ening law and decorum, stupefies conscience. 'Lynch- 
law' prevails only where there is greater hardihood 
and self-subsistency in the leaders. A mob cannot be 
a permanency: everybody's interest requires that it 
should not exist, and only justice satisfies all. 

[13] We must trust infinitely to the beneficent neces- 
sity which shines through all laws. Human nature 
expresses itself in them as characteristically as in 
statues, or songs, or railroads, and an abstract of the 
codes of nations would be a transcript of the common 
conscience. Governments have their origin in the 
moral identity of men. Reason for one is seen to be 
reason for another, and for every other. There is a 
middle measure which satisfies all parties, be they 
never so many, or so resolute for their own. Every 
man finds a sanction for his simplest claims and deeds 
in decisions of his own mind, which he calls Truth 
and Holiness. In these decisions all the citizens find 
a perfect agreement, and only in these; not in w^hat 
is good to eat, good to wear, good use of time, or what 
amount of land, or of public aid, each is entitled to 
claim. This truth and justice men presently endeavor 
to make application of, to the measuring of land, the 
apportionment of service, the protection of life and 
property. Their first endeavors, no doubt, are very 
awkward. Yet absolute right is the first governor; 
or, every government is an impure theocracy. The idea 
after which each community is aiming to make and 
mend its law, is, the will of the wise man. The wise 
man, it cannot find in nature, and it makes awkward 
but earnest efforts to secure his government by con- 



198 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

trivance; as, by causing the entire people to give their 
voices on every measure; or, by a double choice to get 
the representation of the whole; or, by a selection of 
the best citizens; or, to secure the advantages of effici- 
ency and internal peace, by confiding the government 
to one, who may himself select his agents. All forms 
of government symbolize an immortal government, 
common to all dynasties and independent of numbers, 
perfect where two men exist, perfect where there is 
only one man. 

[14] Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement 
to him of the character of his fellows. My right and 
my wrong, is their right and their wrong. Whilst I 
do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, 
my neighbor and I shall often agree in our means, 
and work together for a time to one end. But when- 
ever I find my dominion over myself not sufficient 
for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I 
overstep the truth, and come into false relations to 
him. I may have so much more skill or strength 
than he, that he cannot express adequately his sense 
of wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a lie both him 
and me. Love and nature cannot maintain the assump- 
tion: it must be executed by a practical lie, namely, by 
force. This undertaking for another, is the blunder 
which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments 
of the world. It is the same thing in numbers, as in 
a pair, only not quite so intelligible. I can see well 
enough a great difference between my setting myself 
down to a self-control, and my going to make some- 
body else act after my views: but when a quarter of 



. POLITICS 199 

the human race assume to tell me what I Tniist do, I 
may be too much disturbed by the circumstances to 
see so clearly the absurdity of their command. There- 
fore, all public ends look vague and quixotic beside 
private ones. For, any laws but those which men 
make for themselves, are laughable. If I put myself 
in the place of my child, and we stand in one thought, 
and see that things are thus or thus, that perception 
is law for him and me. We are both there, both act. 
But if, without carrying him into the thought, I look over 
into his plot, and guessing how it is with him, ordain 
this or that, he will never obey me. This is the his- 
tory of governments, — one man does something which 
is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted 
with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains 
that a part of my labor shall go to this or that whimsical 
end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold 
the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing 
to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government ! 
Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, 
except for these. 

[15] Hence, the less government we have, the better, 
— the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The 
antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the 
influence of private character, the growth of the Indi- 
vidual; the reappearance of the principal to supersede 
the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom 
the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a 
shabby imitation. That which all things tend to 
educe, which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revo- 
lutions, go to form and deliver, is character; that is 



200 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

the end of nature, to reach unto this coronation of 
her king. To educate the wise man, the State exists; 
and with the appearance of the wise man, the State 
expires. The appearance of character makes the 
State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He 
needs no army, fort, or navy, — he loves men too well; 
no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; 
no vantage ground, no favorable circumstance. He 
needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no 
church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he is 
the law-giver; no money, for he is value; no road, for 
he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life 
of the creator shoots through him and looks from his 
eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who has the 
spell to draw the prayer and piety of all men unto 
him, needs not husband and educate a few, to share 
with him a select and poetic life. His relation to men 
is angelic ; his memory is myrrh to them ; his presence, 
frankincense and flowers. 

[16] We think our ci\ilization near its meridian, but 
w^e are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning 
star. In our barbarous society the influence of char- 
acter is in its infancy. As a political power, as the 
rightful lord who is to tumble all rulers from their 
chairs, its presence is hardly yet suspected. ^Nlalthus 
and Ricardo quite omit it; the Annual Register is 
silent; in the Conversations' Lexicon, it is not set 
down; the President's Message, the Queen's Speech, 
have not mentioned it; and yet it is never nothing. 
Every thought which genius and piety throw into the 
world, alters the world. The gladiators in the lists 



POLITICS 201 

of power feel, through all their frocks of force and 
simulation, the presence of worth. I think the very 
strife of trade and ambition are confession of this 
divinity; and successes in those fields are the poor 
amends, the fig-leaf with which the shamed soul at- 
tempts to hide its nakedness. I find the like unwill- 
ing homage in all quarters. It is because we know 
how much is due from us, that we are impatient to 
show some petty talent as a substitute for worth. We 
are haunted by a conscience of this right to grandeur 
of character, and are false to it. But each of us has 
some talent, can do somewhat useful, or graceful, or 
formidable, or amusing, or lucrative. That we do, 
as an apology to others and to ourselves, for not reach- 
ing the mark of a good and equal life. But it does 
not satisfy us, whilst we thrust it on the notice of our 
companions. It may throw dust in their eyes, but 
does not smooth our own brow, or give us the tran- 
quillity of the strong when we walk abroad. We do 
penance as we go. Our talent is a sort of expiation, 
and we are constrained to reflect on our splendid 
moment, with a certain humiliation, as somewhat too 
fine, and not as one act of many acts, 'a fair expres- 
sion of our permanent energy. Most persons of 
ability meet in society with a kind of tacit appeal. 
Each seems to say, *I am not all here.' Senators and 
presidents have climbed so high mth pain enough, not 
because they think the place specially agreeable, but 
as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their 
manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their 
compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, 



202 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

hard nature. They must do what they can. Like 
one class of forest animals, they have nothing but a 
prehensile tail; climb they must, or crawl. If a man 
found himself so rich-natured that he could enter into 
strict relations with the best persons, and make life 
serene around him by the dignity and sweetness of 
his behavior, could he afford to circumvent the favor of 
the caucus and the press, and covet relations so hollow 
and pompous, as those of a politician? Surely nobody 
would be a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere. 
[17] The tendencies of the times favor the idea of 
self-government, and leave the individual, for all code, 
to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution, 
which work with more energy than we believe, whilst 
we depend on artificial restraints. The movement in 
this direction has been very marked in modern history. 
Much has been blind and discreditable, but the nature 
of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the 
revolters; for this is a purely moral force. It was 
never adopted by any party in history, neither can be. 
It separates the individual from all party, and unites 
him, at the same time, to the race. It promises a 
recognition of higher rights than those of personal 
freedom, or the security of property. A man has a 
right to be employed, to be trusted, to be loved, to 
be revered. The power of love, as the basis of a State, 
has never been tried. We must not imagine that all 
things are lapsing into confusion, if every tender protes- 
tant be not compelled to bear his part in certain social 
conventions: nor doubt that roads can be built, letters 
carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the govern- 



POLITICS 203 

inent of force is at an end. Are our methods now so 
excellent that all competition is hopeless? Could not 
a nation or friends even devise better ways? On the 
other hand, let not the most conservative and timid 
fear anything from a premature surrender of the bayo- 
net, and the system of force. For, according to the 
order of nature, which is quite superior to our will, it 
stands thus ; there will always be a government of force, 
where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough 
to abjure the code of force, they will be wise enough 
to see how these public ends of the post-office, of the 
highway, of commerce, and the exchange of property, 
of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and 
science, can be answered. 

[18] We live in a very low state of the world, and pay 
unwilling tribute to governments founded on force. 
There is not, among the most religious and instructed 
men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance 
on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the 
unity of things to persuade them that society can be 
maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the 
solar system ; or that the private citizen might be reason- 
able, and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail 
or a confiscation. What is strange too, there never 
was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude, 
to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the 
State on the principle of right and love. All those 
who have pretended this design, have been partial 
reformers, and have admitted in some manner the 
supremacy of the bad State. I do not call to mind a 
single human being who has steadily denied the author- 



204 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

ity of the laws, on the simple ground of his own moral 
nature. Such designs, full of genius and full of fate 
as they are, are not entertained except avowedly as 
air-pictures. If the individual who exhibits them, 
dare to think them practicable, he disgusts scholars 
and churchmen; and men of talent, and women of 
superior sentiments, cannot hide their contempt. Not 
the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth 
with suggestions of this enthusiasm, and there are now 
men, — if indeed I can speak in the plural number, — 
more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing 
with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experi- 
ence will make it for a moment appear impossible, 
that thousands of human beings might exercise towards 
each other the grandest and simplest sentiments, as 
well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers. 

QUESTIONS 

(Numbers refer to pages and paragraphs.) 

187: 1. Will good laws make a good city? "The law is only a 
memorandum." Explain. 

190:4. What difficulty arises from the two objects for which gov- 
ernment exists? 

192:8. What war of recent times illustrates the truth of the last 
sentence? Why do not Emerson's essays become "out-of-date"? 

193: 10. "Good men must not obey the laws too well." Why not? 
When did Emerson advise disobedience to the laws? See Introduc- 
tion. 

195:11. "Of the two great parties," etc. To what extent is this 
description true to-day? 

198: 14. Select a sentence for quotation. 

200:15. "The appearance of character makes the State unneces- 
sary." Explain. Is this true? 

What inference can you draw from this essay as to Emerson's 
ideals? his estimate of men? his hopes for the future? How far 
do you agree with him? 



NATURE. 

The rounded world is fair to see, 

Nine times folded in mysterj^: 

Though baffled seers cannot impart 

The secret of its laboring heart, 

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, 

And all is clear from east to west. 

Spirit that lurks each form within 

Beckons to spirit of its kin; 

Self-kindled every atom glows, 

And hints the future which it owes. 

[1] There are days which occur in this climate, at 
almost anj^ season of the year, wherein the world 
reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly 
bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature 
would indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak 
upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that we 
have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we bask in 
the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; when every- 
thing that has life gives sign of satisfaction, and the 
cattle that lie on the ground seem to have great and 
tranquil thoughts. These halcyons may be looked 
for with a little more assurance in that pure October 
weather, which we distinguish by the name of the 
Indian Summer. The day, immeasurably long, sleeps 
over the broad hills and warm wide fields. To have 
lived through all its sunny hours, seems longevity 
enough. The solitary places do not seem quite lonely. 
At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the 

205 



206 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and 
small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom 
falls off his back with the first step he makes into these 
precincts. Here is sanctity which shames our religions, 
and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find 
nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every 
other circumstance, and judges like a god all men that 
come to her. We have crept out of our close and 
crowded houses into the night and morning, and we 
see what majestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. 
How willingly we would escape the barriers which 
render them comparatively impotent, escape the sophis- 
tication and second thought, and suffer nature to 
entrance us. The tempered light of the woods is like 
a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. 
The anciently reported spells of these places creep on 
us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks, almost 
gleam like iron on the excited eye. The incommun- 
icable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, and 
quit our life of solemn trifles. Here no history, or 
church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and 
the immortal year. How easily we might walk on- 
ward into the opening landscape, absorbed by new 
pictures, and by thoughts fast succeeding each other, 
until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded 
out of the mind, all memory obliterated by the tyranny 
of the present, and we were led in triumph by nature. 
[2] These enchantments are medicinal, they sober 
and heal us. These are plain pleasures, kindly and 
native to us. We come to our own, and make friends 
with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools 



NATURE 207 

would persuade us to despise. We never can part 
with it; the mind loves its old home: as water to our 
thirst, so is the rock, the ground, to our eyes, and 
hands, and feet. It is firm water: it is cold flame: 
what health, what affinity! Ever an old friend, ever 
like a dear friend and brother, when we chat affect- 
edly with strangers, comes in this honest face, and 
takes a grave liberty with us, and shames us out of 
our nonsense. Cities give not the human senses room 
enough. We go out daily and nightly to feed the eyes- 
on the horizon, and require so much scope, just as 
we need water for our bath. There are all degrees 
of natural influence, from these quarantine powers 
of nature, up to her dearest and gravest ministrations 
to the imagination and the soul. There is the bucket 
of cold water from the spring, the wood-flre to which 
the chilled traveller rushes for safety,' — and there is 
the sublime moral of autumn and of noon. We nestle 
in nature, and draw our living as parasites from her 
roots and grains, and we receive glances from the 
heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude, and fore- 
tell the remotest future. The blue zenith is the point 
in which romance and reality meet. I think, if we 
should be rapt away into all that we dream of heaven, 
and should converse with Gabriel and Uriel, the upper 
skv would be all that would remain of our furniture. 
[3] It seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in 
which we have given heed to some natural object. 
The fall of snowflakes in a still air, preserving to each 
crystal its perfect form, the blowing of sleet over a 
wide sheet of water, and over plains, the waving rye- 



208 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

field, the mimic waving of acres of houstonia, whose 
innumerable florets whiten and ripple before the eye; 
the reflections of trees and flowers in glassy lakes; the 
musical steaming odorous south wind, which converts 
all trees to windharps;the crackling and spurting of hem- 
lock in the flames; or of pine logs, which yield glory 
to the walls and faces in the sitting-room, — these are 
the music and pictures of the most ancient religion. 
My house stands in low land, with limited outlook, 
and on the skirt of the village. But I go with my 
friend to the shore of our little river, and with one 
stroke of the paddle, I leave the village politics and 
personalities, yes, and the world of villages and per- 
sonalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of 
sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted 
man to enter without noviciate and probation. We 
penetrate bodily this incredible beauty: we dip our 
hands in this painted element: our eyes are bathed in 
these lights and forms. A holiday, a villeggiatura, a 
royal revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival 
that valor and beauty, power and taste, ever decked 
and enjoyed, establishes itself on the insta^nt. These 
sunset clouds, these delicately emerging stars, with 
their private and ineffable glances, signify it and proffer 
it. I am taught the poorness of our invention, the 
ugliness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have 
early learned that they must work as enchantment 
and sequel to this original beauty. I am over-instructed 
for my return. Henceforth I shall be hard to please. 
I cannot go back to toys. I am grown expensive and 
sophisticated. I can no longer live without elegance; 



NATURE 209 

but a countryman shall be my master of revels. He 
who knows the most, he who knows what sweets and 
virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the 
heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is 
the rich and royal man. Only as far as the masters 
of the world have called in nature to their aid, can 
they reach the height of magnificence. This is the 
meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden- 
houses, islands, parks, and preserves, to back their 
faulty personality with these strong accessories. I 
do not wonder that the landed interest should be 
invincible in the state with these dangerous auxiliaries. 
These bribe and invite; not kings, not palaces, not 
men, not women, but these tender and poetic stars, 
eloquent of secret promises. We heard what the rich 
man said, we knew of his villa, his grove, his wine, 
and his company, but the provocation and point of 
the invitation came out of these beguiling stars. In 
their soft glances, I see what men strove to realize in 
some Versailles, or Paphos, or Ctesiphon. Indeed, 
it is the magical lights of the horizon, and the blue 
sky for the background, which save all our works of 
art, which were otherwise bawbles. When the rich 
tax the poor with servility and obsequiousness, they 
should consider the effect of men reputed to be the 
possessors of nature, on imaginative minds. Ah! if 
the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches! A boy 
hears a military band play on the field at night, and 
he has kings and queens, and famous chivalry pal- 
pably before him. He hears the echoes of a horn in a 
hill country, in the Notch Mountains, for example, 



210 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

which converts the mountains into an ^Eohan harp, 
and this supernatural tiralira restores to him the 
Dorian mythology, Apollo, Diana, and all divine 
hunters and huntresses. Can a musical note be so 
lofty, so haughtily beautiful ! To the poor young poet, 
thus fabulous is his picture of society; he is loyal; he 
respects the rich; they are rich for the sake of his 
imagination; how poor his fancy would be, if they 
were not rich! That they have some high-fenced 
grove, which they call a park; that they live in larger 
and better-garnished saloons than he has visited, and 
go in coaches, keeping only the society of the elegant, 
to watering-places, and to distant cities, are the ground- 
work from which he has delineated estates of romance, 
compared with which their actual possessions are 
shanties and paddocks. The muse herself betrays 
her son, and enhances the gifts of wealth and well- 
born beauty, by a radiation out of the air, and clouds, 
and forests that skirt the road, — a certain haughty 
favor, as if from patrician genii to patricians, a kind 
of aristocracy in nature, a prince of the power of 
the air: 

[4] The moral sensibility which makes Edens and 
Tempes so easily, may not be always found, but the 
material landscape is never far off. We can find 
these enchantments without visiting the Gomo Lake, 
or the Madeira Islands. We exaggerate the praises 
of local scenery. In every landscape, the point of 
astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth, 
and that is seen from the first hillock as well as from 
the top of the Alleghanies. The stars at night stoop 



NATURE 211 

down over the brownest, homeliest common, with all 
the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the 
Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt. The 
uprolled clouds and the colors of morning and evening, 
will transfigure maples and alders. The difference 
between landscape and landscape is small, but there 
is great difference in the beholders. There is nothing 
so wonderful in any particular landscape, as the neces- 
sity of being beautiful under which every landscape 
lies. Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty 
breaks in everywhere. 

[5] But it is very easy to outrun the svmpathy of 
readers on this topic, which schoolmen called natura 
naturata, or nature passive. One can hardly speak 
directly of it without excess. It is as easy to broach 
in mixed companies what is called *^the subject of 
religion.'' A susceptible person does not like to in- 
dulge his tastes in this kind, without the apology of 
some trivial necessity; he goes to see a wood-lot, or 
to look at the crops, or to fetch a plant or a mineral 
from a remote locality, or he carries a fowling-piece, 
or a fishing-rod. I suppose this shame must have a 
good reason. A dilettantism in nature is barren and 
unworthy. The fop of fields is no better than his 
brother of Broadway. Men are naturally hunters and 
inquisitive of wood-craft, and I suppose that such a 
gazetteer as wood-cutters and Indians should furnish 
facts for, would take place in the most sumptuous 
drawing-rooms of all the ''Wreaths'' and ''Flora's 
chaplets" of the book-shops; yet ordinarily, whether 
we are too clumsy for so subtle a topic, or from what- 



212 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

ever cause, as soon as men begin to wTite on nature, 
they fall into euphuism. Frivolity is a most unfit 
tribute to Pan, who ought to be represented in the 
mythology as the most continent of gods. I would 
not be frivolous before the admirable reserve and 
prudence of time, yet I cannot renounce the right of 
returning often to this old topic. The multitude of 
false churches accredits the true religion. Literature, 
poetry, science, are the homage of man to this un- 
fathomed secret, concerning which no sane man can 
affect an indifference or incuriosity. Nature is loved 
by what is best in us. It is loved as the city of God, 
although, or rather because there is no citizen. The 
sunset is unlike an}i;hing that is underneath it: it 
wants men. And the beauty of nature must always 
seem unreal and mocking, until the landscape has 
human figures, that are as good as itself. If there 
were good men, there would never be this rapture in 
nature. If the king is in the palace, nobody looks at 
the walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is 
filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn from the 
people, to find relief in the majestic men that are 
suggested by the pictures and the architecture. The 
critics who complain of the sickly separation of the 
beauty of nature from the thing to be done, must 
consider that our hunting of the picturesque is insep- 
arable from our protest against false society. Man is 
fallen; nature is erect, and serves as a differential 
thermometer, detecting the presence or absence of 
the divine sentiment in man. By fault of our dul- 
ness and selfishness, we are looking up to nature, but 



NATURE . 213 

when we are conv^alescent, nature will look up to us. 
We see the foaming brook with compunction: if our 
own life flowed with the right energy, we should shame 
the brook. The stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, 
and not with reflex rays of sun and moon. Nature 
may be as selfishly studied as trade. Astronomy to 
the selfish becomes astrology. Psychology, mesmer- 
ism (with intent to show where our spoons are gone); 
and anatomy and physiology, become phrenology and 
palmistry. 

[6] But taking timely warning, and lea\dng many 
things unsaid on this topic, let us not longer omit our 
homage to the Efficient Nature, natura naturajis, the 
quick cause, before which all forms flee as the driven 
snows, itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks 
and multitudes, (as the ancient represented nature by 
Proteus, a shepherd,) and in undescribable variety. 
It publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles 
and spicula, through transformation on transforma- 
tion to the highest symmetries, arriving at consum- 
mate results without a shock or a leap. A little heat, 
that is, a little motion, is all that differences the bald, 
dazzling white, and deadly cold poles of the earth 
from the prolific tropical climates. All changes pass 
without violence, by reason of the two cardinal condi- 
tions of boundless space and boundless time. Geol- 
ogy has initiated us into the secularity of nature, and 
taught us to disuse our dame-school measures, and 
exchange our Mosaic and Ptolemaic schemes for her 
large style. We knew nothing rightly, for want of 
perspective. Now we learn what patient periods must 



214 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

round themselves before the rock is formed, then be- 
fore the rock is broken, and the first Hchen race has 
disintegrated the thinnest external plate into soil, and 
opened the door for the remote Flora, Fauna, Ceres, 
and Pomona, to come in. How far off yet is the trilo- 
bite ! how far the quadruped ! how inconceivably remote 
is man! All duly arrive, and then race after race of 
men. It is a long way from granite to the oyster; 
farther yet to Plato, and the preaching of the immor- 
tality of the soul. Yet all must come, as surely as the 
first atom has two sides. 

[7] Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the 
first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. 
The whole code of her laws may be written on the 
thumbnail, or the signet of a ring. The whirling bub- 
ble on the surface of a brook, admits us to the secret 
of the mechanics of the sky. Every shell on the beach 
is a key to it. A little water made to rotate in a cup 
explains the formation of the simpler shells; the addi- 
tion of matter from year to year, arrives at last at the 
most complex form; and yet so poor is nature with 
all her craft, that, from the beginning to the end of 
the universe, she has but one stuff, — but one stuff 
with its two ends, to serve up all her dream-like variety. 
Compound it how she will, star, sand, fire, water, 
tree, man, it is still one stuff, and betrays the same 
properties. 

[8] Nature is always consistent, though she feigns 
to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws, 
and seems to transcend them. She arms and equips 
an animal to find its place and living in the earth, 



NATURE 215 

and, at the same time, she arms and equips another 
animal to destroy it. Space exists to divide creatures; 
but by clothing the sides of a bird with a few feathers, 
she gives him a petty omnipresence. The direction 
is forever onward, but the artist still goes back for ma- 
terials, and begins again with the first elements on 
the most advanced stage: otherwise, all goes to ruin. 
If we look at her work, we seem to catch a glance of 
a system in transition. Plants are the young of the 
world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever 
upward toward consciousness; the trees are imperfect 
men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted 
in the ground. The animal is the novice and pro- 
bationer of a more advanced order. The men, though 
young, having tasted the first drop from the cup of 
thought, are already dissipated: the maples and ferns 
are still uncorrupt; yet no doubt, when they come to 
consciousness, they too will curse and swear. Flowers 
so strictly belong to youth, that we adult men soon 
come to feel, that their beautiful generations concern 
not us: we have had our day; now let the children 
have theirs. The flowers jilt us, and we are old 
bachelors with our ridiculous tenderness. 

[9] Things are so strictly related, that according to 
the skill of the eye, from any one object the parts and 
properties of any other may be predicted. If we had 
eyes to see it, a bit of stone from the city wall would 
certify us of the necessity that man must exist, as 
readily as the city. That identity makes us all one, 
and reduces to nothing great intervals on our cus- 
tomary scale. We talk of deviations from natural 



216 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

life, as if artificial life were not also natural. The 
smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace 
has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white 
bear, omnipotent to its own ends, and is directly 
related, there amid essences and billets-doux, to Him- 
maleh mountain-chains, and the axis of the globe. If 
we consider how much we are nature's, we need not 
be superstitious about towns, as if that terrific or 
benefic force did not find us there also, and fashion 
cities. Nature who made the mason, made the 
house. We may easily hear too much of rural in- 
fluences. The cool disengaged air of natural objects, 
makes them enviable to us, chafed and irritable crea- 
tures with red faces, and we think we shall be as grand 
as they, if we camp out and eat roots; but let us be 
men instead of woodchucks, and the oak and the 
elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs of 
ivory on carpets of silk. 

[10] This guiding identity runs through all the 
surprises and contrasts of the piece, and characterizes 
every law. Man carries the world in his head, the 
whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in a thought. 
Because the history of nature is charactered in his 
brain, therefore is he the prophet and discoverer of 
her secrets. Every known fact in natural science was 
divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was 
actually verified. A man does not tie his shoe with- 
out recognizing laws which bind the farthest regions 
of nature: moon, plant, gas, crystal, are concrete 
geometry and numbers. Common sense knows its 
own, and recognizes the fact at first sight in chemical 



NATURE 217 

experiment. The common sense of Franklin, Dalton, 
Davy, and Black, is the same common sense which 
made the arrangements which now it discovers. 

[11] If the identity expresses organized rest, the 
counter action runs also into organization. The astron- 
omers said, ^Give us matter, and a little motion, and 
we will construct the universe. It is not enough that 
we should have matter, we must also have a single 
impulse, one shove to launch the mass, and generate 
the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces. 
Once heave the ball from the hand, and we can shoAV 
how all this mighty order grew.' — 'A very unreason- 
able postulate,' said the metaphysicians, ^and a plain 
begging of the question. Could you^ not prevail to 
know the genesis of projection, as well as the contin- 
uation of it?^ Nature, meanwhile, had not waited 
for the discussion, but, right or wrong, bestowed the 
impulse, and the balls rolled. It was no great affair, 
a mere push, but the astronomers were right in making 
much of it, for there is no end to the consequences of 
the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates 
itself through all the balls of the system, and through 
every atom of every ball, through all the races of 
creatures, and through the history and performances 
of every individual. Exaggeration is in the course 
of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into 
the world, without adding a small excess of his proper 
quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add 
the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a 
little \dolence of direction in its proper path, a shove 
to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight gener- 



218 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

osity, a drop too much. Without electricity the air 
would rot, and without this violence of direction, 
which men and women have, without a spice of bigot 
and fanatic, no excitement, no efficiency. We aim 
above the mark, to hit the mark. Every act hath 
some falsehood of exaggeration in it. And when now 
and then comes along some sad, sharp-eyed man, 
who sees how paltry a game is played, and refuses 
to play, but blabs the secret; — how then? is 
the bird flown? O no, the wary Nature sends a 
new troop of fairer forms, of lordlier youths, with a 
little more excess of direction to hold them fast to their 
several aim; makes them a little TVTong-headed in that 
direction in which they are rightest, and on goes the 
game again with new whirl, for a generation or two 
more. The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of 
his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, 
without any power to compare and rank his sensa- 
tions, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a 
lead dragoon, or a gingerbread-dog, individualizing 
everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every 
new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the 
fatigue, which this day of continual pretty madness 
has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose 
with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every 
faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of 
the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions, 
— an end of the first importance, which could not be 
trusted to any care less perfect than her own. This 
glitter, this opaline lustre plays round the top of every 
toy to his eye, to ensure his fidelity, and he is deceived 



NATURE 219 

to his good. We are made alive and kept alive by the 
same arts. Let the stoics say what they please, we 
do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat 
is savory and the appetite is keen. The vegetable 
life does not content itself with casting from the flower 
or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth 
with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, 
thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may 
come up, that tens may live to maturity, that, at least, 
one may replace the parent. All things betray the same 
calculated profusion. The excess of fear with which the 
animal frame is hedged round, shrinking from cold, 
starting at sight of a snake, or at a sudden noise, pro- 
tects us, through a multitude of groundless alarms, 
from some one real danger at last. The lover seeks 
in marriage his private felicity and perfection, with 
no prospective end; and nature hides in his happiness 
her own end, namely, progeny, or the perpetuity of 
the race. 

[12] But the craft with which the w^orld is made, 
runs also into the mind and character of men. No 
man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in his com- 
position, a slight determination of blood to the head, 
to make sure of holding him hard to some one point 
which nature had taken to heart. Great causes are 
never tried on their merits; but the cause is reduced 
to particulars to suit the size of the partisans, and 
the contention is ever hottest on minor matters. Not 
less remarkable is the overfaith of each man in the 
importance of what he has to do or say. The poet, 
the prophet, has a higher value for what he utters 



220 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

than any hearer, and therefore it gets spoken. The 
strong, self-complacent Luther declares with an em- 
phasis, not to be mistaken, that ''God himself cannot 
do without wise men." Jacob Behmen and George 
Fox betray their egotism in the pertinacity of their 
controversial tracts, and James Naylor once suffered 
himself to be worshiped as the Christ. Each prophet 
comes presently to identify himself with his thought, 
and to esteem his hat and shoes sacred. However 
this may discredit such persons with the judicious, it 
helps them with the people, as it gives heat, pungency, 
and publicity to their words. A similar experience is 
not infrequent in private life. Each young and ardent 
person writes a diary, in which, when the hours 
of prayer and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. 
The pages thus written are, to him, burning and fra- 
grant : he reads them on his knees by midnight and by 
the morning star; he wets them with his tears: they 
are sacred; too good for the world, and hardly yet to 
be shown to the dearest friend. This is the man- 
child that is born to the soul, and her life still circulates 
in the babe. The umbilical cord has not yet been 
cut. After some time has elapsed, he begins to wish 
to admit his friend to this hallowed experience, and 
with hesitation, yet with firmness, exposes the pagCb 
to his eye. Will they not burn his eyes? The friend 
coldly turns them over, and passes from the writing 
to conversation, with easy transition, which strikes 
the other party with astonishment and vexation. He 
cannot suspect the writing itself. Days and nights 
of fervid life, of communion with angels of darkness 



NATURE 221 

and of light, have engraved their shadowy characters 
on that tearstained book. He suspects the intelli- 
gence or the heart of his friend. Is there then no 
friend? He cannot yet credit that one may have im- 
pressive experience, and yet may not know how to 
put his private fact into literature; and perhaps the 
discovery that wisdom has other tongues and minis- 
ters than we, that though we should hold our peace, 
the truth would not the less be spoken, might check 
injuriously the flames of our zeal. A man can only 
speak, so long as he does not feel his speech to be 
partial and inadequate. It is partial, but he does not 
see it to be so, whilst he utters it. As soon as he is 
released from the instinctive and particular, and sees 
its partiality, he shuts his mouth in disgust. For, 
no man can write anything, who does not think that 
what he writes is for the time the history of the world ; 
or do anything well, who does not esteem his work to 
be of importance. My work may be of none, but I 
must not think it of none, or I shall not do it with 
impunity. 

[13] In like manner, there is throughout nature 
something mocking, something that leads us on and 
on, but arrives nowhere, keeps no faith with us. All 
promise outruns the performance. We live in a 
system of approximations. Every end is prospective 
of some other end, which is also temporary; a round 
and final success nowhere. We are encamped in 
nature, not domesticated. Hunger and thirst lead us 
on to eat and to drink; but bread and wine, mix and 
cook them how you will, leave us hungry and thirsty. 



222 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

after the stomach is full. It is the same with all our 
arts and performances. Our music, our poetry, our 
language itself are not satisfactions, but suggestions. 
The hunger for wealth, which reduces the planet to a 
garden, fools the eager pursuer. What is the end 
sought? Plainly to secure the ends of good sense 
and beauty, from the intrusion of deformity or vul- 
garity of any kind. But w^hat an operose method! 
What a train of means to secure a little conversation! 
This palace of brick and stone, these servants, this 
kitchen, these stables, horses and equipage, this bank- 
stock, and file of mortgages; trade to all the world, 
country-house and cottage by the waterside, all for 
a little conversation, high, clear, and spiritual ! Could 
it not be had as well by beggars on the highway? No, 
all these things came from successive efforts of these 
beggars to remove friction from the wheels of life, and 
give opportunity. Conversation, character, were the 
avowed ends; w^ealth was good as it appeased the 
animal cravings, cured the smoky chimney, silenced 
the creaking door, brought friends together in a warm 
and quiet room, and kept the children and the dinner- 
table in a different apartment. Thought, virtue, 
beauty, were the ends; but it was known that men of 
thought and virtue sometimes had the headache, or 
wet feet, or could lose good time whilst the room w^as 
getting warm in mnter days. Unluckily, in the exer- 
tions necessary to remove these inconveniences, the 
main attention has been diverted to this object; the 
old aims have been lost sight of, and to remove fric- 
tion has come to be the end. That is the ridicule of 



NATURE 223 

rich men, and Boston, London, Vienna, and now the 
governments generally of the world, are cities and 
governments of the rich, and the masses are not men, 
but poor men, that is, men who would be rich; this is 
the ridicule of the class, that they arrive with pains 
and sweat and fury nowhere; when all is done, it is 
for nothing. They are like one who has interrupted 
the conversation of a company to make his speech, 
and now has forgotten what he went to say. The 
appearance strikes the eye everyw^here of an aimless 
society, of aimless nations. Were the ends of nature 
so great and cogent, as to exact this immense sacrifice 
of men? 

[14] Quite analogous to the deceits in life, there is, 
as might be expected, a similar effect on the eye from 
the face of external nature. There is in woods and 
waters a certain enticement and flattery, together 
with a failure to yield a present satisfaction. This 
disappointment is felt in every landscape. I have 
seen the softness and beauty of the summer-clouds 
floating feathery overhead, enjoying, as it seemed, 
their height and pri^dlege of motion, whilst yet they 
appeared not so much the drapery of this place and 
hour, as for looking to some pa\ilions and gardens of 
festivity beyond. It is an odd jealousy: but the poet 
finds himself not near enough to his object. The 
pine-tree, the river, the bank of flowers before him, 
does not seem to be nature. Nature is still elsewhere. 
This or this is but outskirt and far-off reflection and 
echo of the triumph that has passed by, and is now 
at its glancing splendor and heyday, perchance in the 



224 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

neighboring fields, or, if you stand in the field, then 
in the adjacent woods. The present object shall give 
you this sense of stillness that follows a pageant which 
has just gone by. What splendid distance, what 
recesses of ineffable pomp and loveliness in the sun- 
set! But who can go where they are, or lay his hand 
or plant his foot thereon? Off they fall from the round 
world forever and ever. It is the same among the 
men and women^ as among the silent trees, always 
a referred existence, an absence, never a presence and 
satisfaction. Is it, that beauty can never be grasped? 
in persons and in landscape is equally inaccessible? 
The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the A\41dest 
charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him. She 
was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star: she can- 
not be heaven, if she stoops to such a one as he. 

[15] What shall we say of this omnipresent appear- 
ance of that first projectile impulse, of this flattery and 
balking of so many well-meaning creatures? Must 
we not suppose somewhere in the universe a slight 
treachery and derision? Are we not engaged to a 
serious resentment of this use that is made of us? 
Are we tickled trout, and fools of nature? One look 
at the face of heaven and earth lays all petulance at 
rest, and soothes us to wiser convictions. To the 
intelligent, nature converts itself into a vast promise, 
and will not be rashly explained. Her secret is un- 
told. Many and many an (Edipus arrives: he has the 
whole mystery teeming in his brain. Alas! the same 
sorcery has spoiled his skill; no syllable can he shape 
on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like the fresh 



NATURE 225 

rainbow into the deep, but no archangel's wing was 
yet strong enough to follow it, and report of the return 
of the curve. But it also appears, that our actions 
are seconded and disposed to greater conclusions 
than we designed. We are escorted on every hand 
through life by spiritual agents, and a beneficent pur- 
pose lies in wait for us. We cannot bandy words 
\;\ith nature, or deal with her as we deal with persons. 
If we measure our indi\idual forces against hers, we 
may easily feel as if we were the sport of an insuper- 
able destiny. But if, instead of identifying ourselves 
with the work, we feel that the soul of the workman 
streams through us, we shall find the peace of the 
morning dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathom- 
less powers of gra\ity and chemistry, and, over them, 
of life, pre-existing within us in their highest form. 

[16] The uneasiness which the thought of our help- 
lessness in the chain of causes occasions us, results 
from looking too much at one condition of nature, 
namely, Motion. But the drag is never taken from 
the wheel. Wherever the impulse exceeds, the Rest 
or Identity insinuates its compensation. All over the 
wide fields of earth grows the prunella or self-heal. 
After every foolish day we sleep off the fumes and furies 
of its hours; and though we are always engaged with 
particulars, and often enslaved to them, we bring with 
us to every experiment the innate universal laws. 
These, while they exist in the mind as ideas, stand 
around us in nature forever embodied, a present sanity 
to expose and cure the insanity of men. Our servitude 
to particulars betrays into a hundred foolish expecta- 



226 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

tions. We anticipate a new era from the invention 
of a locomotive, or a balloon; the new engine brings 
with it the old checks. They say that by electro- 
magnetism, your salad shall be grown from the seed, 
whilst your fowl is roasting for dinner: it is a symbol 
of our modern aims and endeavors, — of our conden- 
sation and acceleration of objects: but nothing is 
gained: nature cannot be cheated: man's life is but 
seventy salads long, grow they swift or grow they slow. 
In these checks and impossibilities, however, w^e find 
our advantage, not less than in the impulses. Let 
the victory fall where it will, we are on that side. 
And the knowledge that we traverse the w^hole scale 
of being, from the centre to the poles of nature, and 
have some stake in every possibility, lends that sub- 
lime lustre to death, which philosophy and religion 
have too outwardly and literally striven to express in 
the popular doctrine of the immortality of the soul. 
The reality is more excellent than the report. Here 
is no ruin, no discontinuity, no spent ball. The 
divine circulations never rest nor linger. Nature is 
the incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought, 
again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is 
mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever 
escaping again into the state of free thought. Hence 
the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind, 
of natural objects, whether inorganic or organized. 
Man imprisoned, man crystallized, man vegetative, 
speaks to man impersonated. That power which 
does not respect quantity, which makes the whole and 
the particle its equal channel, delegates its smile to 



NATURE 227 

the morning, and distils its essence into every drop 
of rain. Every moment instructs, and every object: 
for wisdom is infused into every form. It has been 
poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it 
slid into us as pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melan- 
choly days, or in days of cheerful labor; we did not 
guess its essence, until after a long time. 

QUESTIONS 

(Numbers refer to pages and paragraphs.) 

205 : 1. How does this paragraph compare with the essay last studied 
in clearness of style? in degree of feeling? in beauty? Select one 
or two of the best figurative expressions in this paragraph. 

211: 5. Select a sentence for quotation. 

213:6. W^hat scientific theory is stated in this paragraph? 

215:8. Point out here one of Emerson's rare touches of humor. 

219: 12. "No man is quite sane," is this true? 

222:13. W^hat is Emerson's statement of the real end of wealth? 
Do you agree with it? 

225: 15. Note Emerson's reference to the spiritual side — a frequent 
thing in his writings. Wliat instances can you give in other essays? 

Has this essay a formal conclusion? Could another paragraph 
be added? Could it have ended with the preceding paragraph? 
What can you say of the structure of the essay as a whole? 

What inferences about Emerson can you draw from par. 1 and 3? 
From par. 6 and 7? 



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET. 

[1] Great men are more distinguished by range and 
extent than by orginality. If we require the origi- 
nality which consists in weaving, like a spider, their 
web from their own bowels; in finding clay, and mak- 
ing bricks, and building the house, — no great men are 
original. Nor does valuable originality consist in 
unlikeness to other men. The hero is in the press of 
knights and the thick of events; and, seeing what 
men want and sharing their desire, he adds the need- 
ful length of sight and of arm to come at the desired 
point. The greatest genius is the most indebted man. 
A poet is no rattle-brain, saying what comes upper- 
most, and, because he says everything, saying, at 
last, something good; but a heart in unison with his 
time and country. There is nothing whimsical and 
fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, 
freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed 
with the most determined aim which any man or class 
knows of in his times. 

[2] The genius of our life is jealous of indi\iduals, 
anS mil not have any indi\ddual great, except through 
the general. There is no choice to genius. A great 
man does not v/ake up on some fine morning, and 
say: — ''I am full of life, I will go to sea, and find an 
antarctic continent; to-day I will square the circle; 
I will ransack botany, and find a new^ food for man; 
I have a new architecture in my mind; I foresee a new 

228 



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET 229 

mechanic power/' No, but he finds himself in the 
river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by 
the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries. He 
stands where all the eyes of men look one way, and 
their hands all point in the direction in which he 
should go. The Church has reared him amidst rites 
and pomps, and he carries out the advice which her 
music gave liim, and builds a cathedral needed by her 
chants and processions. He finds a war raging; it 
educates him, by trumpet, in barracks, and he betters 
the instruction. He finds two counties groping to 
bring coal, or flour, or fish from the place of produc- 
tion to the place of consumption, and he hits on a 
railroad. Every master has found his materials col- 
lected, and his power lay in his sympathy with his 
people, and in his love of the materials he WTOught in. 
What an economy of power! and what a compensa- 
tion for the shortness of life ! All is done to his hand. 
The world has brought him thus far on his way. The 
human race has gone out before him, sunk the hills, 
filled the hollows, and bridged the rivers. Men, 
nations, poets, artisans, women, all have worked for 
him, and he enters into their labors. Choose any 
other thing, out of the line of tendency, out of the 
national feeling and history, and he would have all 
to do for himself; his powers would be expended in 
the first preparations. Great genial power, one would 
almost say, consists in not being original at all; in 
being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, 
and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unob- 
structed throuo:h the mind. 



230 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

[3] Shakspeare's youth fell in a time when the Enoj- 
lish j)e()])le were importunate for dramatic entertain- 
ments. The court took oii'ence easily at political 
allusions, and attempted to suppress them. The 
Puritans, a growing and energetic party, and the religi- 
gious among the Anglican church, would suppress 
them. But the people wanted them. Inn-yards, 
houses without roofs, and extemporaneous enclosures 
at country fairs were the ready theatres of strolling 
players. The people had tasted this new joy; and as 
we could not hope to su])press newspapers now, — no, 
not by the strongest party, — neither then could king, 
])relate, or puritan, alone or united, suppress an organ 
which was ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, 
Punch, and library, at the same time. Probably 
king, prelate, and puritan all found their own account 
in it. It had become, by all causes, a national inter- 
est — by no means conspicuous, so that some great 
scholar would have thought of treating it in an English 
history, but not a whit less considerable because it 
was cheap and of no account, like a baker's-shop. 
The best proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers 
which suddenly broke into this field: Kyd, Marlow, 
Greene, Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Hey- 
wood, jNIiddleton, Peele, Ford, Massinger, Beaumont; 
and Fletcher. 

[4] The secure possession, by the stage, of the pub- 
lic mind is of the first importance to the poet who 
w^orks for it. He loses no time in idle experiments. 
Here is audience and expectation prepared. In the 
case of Shakspeare there is much more. At the time 



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET 231 

when he left Stratford and went up to London, a great 
body of stage plays, of all dates and wTiters, existed 
in manuscript, and were in turn produced on the 
boards. Here is the Tale of Troy, which the audi- 
ence will bear hearing some part of, every week; the 
Death of Julius Caesar, and other stories out of Plu- 
tarch, which they never tire of; a shelf full of English 
history, from the chronicles of Brut and Arthur, down 
to the royal Henrys, which men hear eagerly; and a 
string of doleful tragedies, merry Italian tales, and 
Spanish voyages, which all the London 'prentices 
know. All the mass has been treated, with more or 
less skill, by every play^vTight, and the prompter has 
the soiled and tattered manuscripts. It is now no 
longer possible to say who \\Tote them first. They 
have been the property of the theatre so long, and 
so many rising geniuses have enlarged or altered 
them, inserting a speech or a whole scene, or adding a 
song, that no man can any longer claim copyright on 
this work of numbers. Happily, no man wishes to. 
They are not yet desired in that way. We have few 
readers, many spectators and hearers. They had best 
lie where thev are. 

[5] Shakspeare, in common with his comrades, es- 
teemed the mass of old plays waste stock, in which 
any experiment could be freely tried. Had the prestige 
which hedges about a modern tragedy existed, nothing 
could have been done. The rude warm blood of the 
living England circulated in the play as in street- 
ballads, and gave body which he wanted to his airy 
and majestic fancy. The poet needs a ground in 



232 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

popular tradition on which he may work, and which 
again may restrain his art within the due temperance. 
It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for 
his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to 
his hand, leaves him at leisure and in full strength 
for the audacities of his imagination. In short, the 
poet owes to his legend what sculpture owed to the 
temple. Sculpture in Egypt and in Greece grew up 
in subordination to architecture. It was the orna- 
ment of the temple wall: at first a rude relief carved 
on pediments, then the relief became bolder, and a 
head or arm was projected from the wall, the groups 
being still arrayed with reference to the building, 
which serves also as a frame to hold the figures; and 
when at last the greatest freedom of style and treat- 
ment was reached, the prevailing genius of archi- 
tecture still enforced a certain calmness and continence 
in the statue. As soon as the statue was begun for 
itself, and with no reference to the temple or palace, 
the art began to decline: freak, extravagance, and 
exhibition took the place of the old temperance. This 
balance-wheel which the sculptor found in archi- 
tecture, the perilous irritablity of poetic talent found 
in the accumulated dramatic materials to which the 
people were already wonted, and which had a certain 
excellence which no single genius, however extra- 
ordinary, could hope to create. 

[6] In point of fact, it appears that Shakspeare did 
owe debts in all directions, and was able to use what- 
ever he found; and the amount of indebtedness may 
be inferred from Malone's laborious computations in 



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET . 233 

regard to the First, Second, and Third parts of Henry 
VL, in which ''out of 6,043 lines, 1,771 were written 
by some author preceding Shakspeare; 2,373 by him 
on the foundation laid by his predecessors; and 1,899 
were entirely his own/' And the proceeding investi- 
gation hardly leaves a single drama of his absolute 
invention. Malone's sentence is an important piece 
of external history. In Henry VHI. I think I see 
plainly the cropping out of the original rock on which 
his ow^n finer stratum was laid. The first play was 
written by a superior, thoughtful man with a vicious 
ear. I can mark his lines and know well their cadence. 
See Wolsey's soliloquy and the following scene with 
Cromwell, where, instead of the metre of Shakspeare, 
— ^w^hose secret is that the thought constructs the tune, so 
that reading for the sense will best bring out the rhythm, 
— here the lines are constructed on a given tune 
and the verse has even a trace of pulpit eloquence. 
But the play contains through all its length unmistak- 
able traits of Shakspeare's hand, and some passages, 
as the account of the coronation, are like autographs. 
What is odd, the compliment to Queen Elizabeth is 
in the bad rh}i;hm. 

[7] Shakspeare knew that tradition supplies a better 
fable than any invention can. If he lost any credit 
of design he augmented his resources; and at that 
day our petulant demand for originalty was not so 
much pressed. There was no literature for the mil- 
lion. The universal reading, the cheap press, were 
unknown. A great poet who appears in illiterate 
times absorbs into his sphere all the light which is 



234 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

anyT\^here radiating. Every intellectual jewel, every 
flower of sentiment, it is his fine office to bring to his 
people; and he comes to value his memory equally 
with his invention. He is therefore little solicitous 
whence his thoughts have been derived — whether 
through translation, whether through tradition, whether 
by travel in distant countries, whether by inspiration; 
from whatever source, they are equally welcome to 
his uncritical audience. Nay, he borrows very near 
home. Other men say wise things as well as he; 
only they say a good many foolish things, and do not 
know when they have spoken wisely. He knows the 
sparkle of the true stone, and puts it in high place 
wherever he finds it. Such is the happy position of 
Homer, perhaps; of Chaucer, of Saadi. They felt 
that all wit was their wit. And they are librarians 
and historiographers as well as poets. Each roman- 
cer w^as heir and dispenser of all the hundred tales 
of the world, — 

'Tresenting Thebes' and Pelops' line, 

And the tale of Troy divine." 

The influence of Chaucer is conspicuous in all our 
early literature; and, more recently, not only Pope 
and^Dryden have been beholden to him, but, in the 
whole society of English VvTiters, a large unacknowl- 
edged debt is easily traced. One is charmed with 
the opulence which feeds so many pensioners. But 
Chaucer is a huge borrower. Chaucer, it seems, 
drew continually, through Lydgate and Caxton, from 
Guido di Colonna, whose Latin romance of the Tro- 
jan war was in turn a compilation from Dares Phry- 



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET 235 

gius, Ovid, and Statins. Then Petrarch, Boccaccio, and 
the Proven9al poets are his benefactors : the Romaunt of 
the Rose is only judicions translation from William of 
Lorris and John of Meung; Troilus and Creseide, from 
Lollius of Urbino; The Cock and the Fox, from the 
Lais of ]Marie; The House of Fame, from the French 
or Italian; and poor Gower he uses as if he were only 
a brick-kiln or stone-quarry, out of which to build his 
house. He steals by this apology — that what he takes 
has no worth where he finds it, and the greatest where 
he leaves it. It has come to be practically a sort of 
rule in literature, that a man ha^dng once shown him- 
self capable of original writing is entitled thenceforth 
to steal from the writings of others at discretion. 
Thought is the property of him who can entertain 
it, and of him who can adequately place it. A 
certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed 
thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to 
do with them they become our own. 

[8] Thus all orginality is relative. Every thinker 
is retrospective. The learned member of the legis- 
lature at Westminster or at Washington, speaks and 
votes for thousands. Show us the constituency, and 
the now in^isible channels by which the senator is 
made aware of their wishes, the crowd of practical 
and knowing men who, by correspondence or con- 
versation, are feeding him with e^idence, anecdotes, 
and estimates, and it will bereave his fine attitude 
and resistance of something of their impressiveness. 
As Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Webster vote, so Locke 
and Rousseau think for thousands; and so there were 



236 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

fountains all around Homer, Menu, Saadi, or Milton 
from which they drew; friends, lovers, books, tradi- 
tions, proverbs, — all perished, — which^ if seen, would 
go to reduce the wonder. Did the bard speak with 
authority? Did he feel himself overmatched by any 
companion? The appeal is to the consciousness of 
the writer. Is there at last in his breast a Delphi 
whereof to ask concerning any thought or thing, 
whether it be verily so, yea or nay? and to have answer, 
and to rely on that? All the debts which such a man 
could contract to other wit would never disturb his 
consciousness of originality; for the ministrations of 
books, and of other minds, are a whiff of smoke to that 
most private reality with which he has conversed. 

[9] It is easy to see that what is best written or done 
by genius, in the world, was no man's work, but came 
by wide social labor, when a thousand wrought like 
one, sharing the same impulse. Our English Bible 
is a wonderful specimen of the strength and music 
of the English language. But it was not made by 
one man, or at one time; but centuries and churches 
brought it to perfection. There never was a time 
when there was not some translation existing. The 
Liturgy, admired for its energy and pathos, is an 
anthology of the piety of ages and nations, a transla- 
tion of the prayers and forms of the Catholic church, 
— these collected, too, in long periods, from the prayers 
and meditations of every saint and sacred writer all 
over the world. Grotius makes the like remark in 
respect to the Lord's Prayer, that the single clauses 
of which it is composed were alreadv in use, in the 



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET 237 

time of Christ, in the rabbinical forms. He picked 
out the grains of gold. The nervous language of the 
Common Law, the impressive forms of our courts, 
and the precision and substantial truth of the legal 
distinctions are the contribution of all the sharp- 
sighted, strong-minded men who have lived in the 
countries where these laws govern. The translation 
of Plutarch gets its excellence by being translation 
on translation. There never was a time when there 
was none. All the truly idiomatic and national phrases 
are kept, and all others successively picked out, and 
thrown away. Something like the same process had 
gone on, long before, with the originals of these books. 
The world takes liberties with world-books. Vedas, 
iEsop's Fables, Pilpay, Arabian Nights, Cid, Iliad, 
Robin Hood, Scottish Minstrelsy, are not the work 
of single men. In the composition of such works, 
the time thinks, the market thinks, the mason, the 
carpenter, the merchant, the farmer, the fop, all think 
for us. Every book supplies its time with one good 
word ; every municipal law, every trade, every folly of 
the day, and the generic catholic genius who is not 
afraid or ashamed to owe his originality to the origi- 
nality of all stands with the next age as the recorder 
and embodiment of his own. 

[10] We have to thank the researches of antiquaries 
and the Shakspeare Society for ascertaining the steps 
of the English drama, from the mysteries celebrated 
in churches and by churchmen, and the final detach- 
ment from the church, and the completion of secular 
plavs from Ferrex and Porrex, and Gammer Gurton's 



238 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Needle, down to the possession of the stage by the 
very pieces which Shakspeare altered, remodelled, 
and finally made his own. Elated with success, and 
piqued by the growing interest of the problem, they 
have left no book-stall unsearched, no chest in a gar- 
ret unopened, no file of old yellow accounts to decom- 
pose in damp and worms, so keen was the hope to 
discover whether the boy Shakspeare poached or not, 
whether he held horses at the theatre door, whether 
he kept school, and why he left in his will only his 
second-best bed to Anne Hathaway, his wife. 

[11] There is somewhat touching in the madness with 
which the passing age mischooses the object on which 
all candles shine and all eyes are turned; the care 
with which it registers every trifle touching Queen 
Elizabeth, and King James, and the Essexes, Leices- 
ters, Burleighs, and Buckinghams; and lets pass with- 
out a single valuable note the founder of another 
dynasty which alone will cause the Tudor dynasty 
to be remembered — the man who carries the Saxon 
race in him by the inspiration which feeds him, and 
on whose thoughts the foremost people of the world 
are now for some ages to be nourished, and minds 
to receive this and not another bias. A popular player 
— ^nobody suspected he was the poet of the human 
race; and the secret was kept as faithfully from poets 
and intellectual men as from courtiers and frivolous 
people. Bacon, who took the inventory of the human 
understanding for his times, never mentioned his 
name. Ben Jonson, though we have strained his 
few words of regard and panegyric, had no suspicion 



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET 239 

of the elastic fame whose first vibrations he was at- 
tempting. He no doubt thought the praise he has 
conceded to him generous, and esteemed himself, 
out of all question, the better poet of the two. 

[12] If it need wit to know w^it, according to the 
proverb, Shakspeare's time should be capable of recog- 
nizing it. Sir Henry Wotton was born four years 
after Shakspeare, and died twenty-three years after 
him; and I find among his correspondents and ac- 
quaintances the following persons: Theodore Beza, 
Isaac Casaubon, Sir Philip Sidney, Earl of Essex, 
Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir 
Henry Vane, Isaac Walton, Dr. Donne, Abraham 
Cowley, Bellarmine, Charles Cotton, John Pym, John 
Hales, Kepler, Vieta, Albericus Gentilis, Paul Sarpi, 
Arminius; with all of whom exists some token of his 
having communicated, without enumerating many 
others whom doubtless he saw,— Shakspeare, Spenser, 
Jonson, Beaumont, Massinger, two Herberts, Mar- 
low, Chapman, and the rest. Since the constellation 
of great men who appeared in Greece in the time of 
Pericles, there was never any such society; yet their 
genius failed them to find out the best head in the 
universe. Our poet's mask was impenetrable. You 
cannot see the mountain near. It took a century to 
make it suspected; and not until two centuries had 
passed after his death did any criticism which we 
think adequate begin to appear. It was not possible 
to T\Tite the history of Shakspeare till now, for he is 
the father of German literature; it was on the intro- 
duction of Shakspeare into German by Lessing, and 



240 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

the translation of his works by Wieland and Schlegel, 
that the rapid burst of German literature was most 
intimately connected. It was not until the nineteenth 
century, whose speculative genius is a sort of living 
Hamlet, that the tragedy of Hamlet could find such 
wondering readers. Now, literature, philosophy, and 
thought are Shakspearized. His mind is the horizon 
beyond which, at present, we do not see. Our ears 
are educated to music bv his rh^ihm. Colerido;e and 
Goethe are the only critics who have expressed our 
convictions with any adequate fidelity; but there is 
in all cultivated minds a silent appreciation of his 
superlative power and beauty, which, like Christian- 
ity, qualifies the period. 

[13] The Shakspeare Society have inquired in all 
directions, advertised the missing facts, offered money 
for any information that will lead to proof, and with 
w^hat result? Beside some important illustration of 
the history of the English stage, to which I have ad- 
verted, they have gleaned a few facts touching the 
property, and dealings in regard to property, of the 
poet. It appears that, from year to year, he owned 
a larger share in the Blackfriars' Theatre; its ward- 
robe and other appurtenances were his; that he bought 
an estate in his native village, with his earnings as 
w'riter and shareholder; that he lived in the best house 
in Stratford; was intrusted by his neighbors T\ith 
their commissions in London, as of borrowing money 
and the like; that he was a veritable farmer. About 
the time when he was writing Macbeth, he sues Philip 
Hogers, in the borough-court of Stratford, for thirty- 



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET 241 

five shillings ten pence, for corn delivered to him at 
different times; and, in all respects, appears as a good 
husband, with no reputation for eccentricity or excess. 
He was a good-natured sort of man, an actor and 
shareholder in the theatre, not in any striking manner 
distinguished from other actors and managers. I 
admit the importance of this information. It was 
well worth the pains that have been taken to procure it. 
[14] But whatever scraps of information concerning 
his condition these researches may have rescued, they 
can shed no light upon that infinite invention which 
is the concealed magnet of his attraction for us. We 
are very clumsy writers of history. We tell the chron- 
icle of parentage, birth, birthplace, schooling, school- 
mates, earning of money, marriage, publication of 
books, celebrity, death; and when we have come to 
an end of this gossip, no ray of relation appears be- 
tween it and the goddess-born; and it seems as if, 
had we dipped at random into the ''Modern Plutarch,'' 
and read any other life there, it would have fitted the 
poems as well. It is the essence of poetry to spring, 
like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the in- 
visible, to abolish the past, and refuse all history. 
Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and Collier have wasted 
their oil. The famed theatres, Co vent Garden, Drury 
Lane, the Park and Tremont, have vainly assisted. 
Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Macready 
dedicate their lives to this genius; him they crown, 
elucidate, obey, and express. The genius knows 
them not. The recitation begins; one golden word 
leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry, 



242 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

and sweetly torments us with invitations to its own 
inaccessible homes. I remember I went once to see 
the Hamlet of a famed performer, the pride of the 
English stage; and all I then heard, and all I now 
remember, of the tragedian was that in which the 
tragedian had no part: simply Hamlet's question to 
the ghost, — 

'^What may this mean, 
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel 
Revisit 'st thus the glimpses of the moon?'' 

That imagination which dilates the closet he writes 
in to the world's dimension, crowds it with agents 
in rank and order, as quickly reduces the big reality 
to be the glimpses of the moon. These tricks of his 
magic spoil for us the illusions of the greenroom. 
Can any biography shed light on the localities into 
which the Midsummer Night's Dream admits me? 
Did Shakspeare confide to any notary or parish re- 
corder, sacristan, or surrogate, in Stratford, the genesis 
of that delicate creation? The forest of Arden, the 
nimble air of Scone Castle, the moonlight of Portia's 
villa, ''the antres vast and desarts idle" of Othello's 
captivity — ^where is the third cousin, or grand-nephew, 
the chancellor's file of accounts, or private letter, 
that has kept one word of those transcendent secrets? 
In fine, in this drama, as in all great works of art, — 
in the Cyclopsean architecture of Egypt and India, 
m the Phidian sculpture, the Gothic minsters, the 
Italian painting, the ballads of Spain and Scotland, 
— the genius draws up the ladder after him when the 
creative age goes up to heaven and gives way to a 



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET 243 

new, who see the works, and ask in vain for a 
history. 

[15] Shakspeare is the only biographer of Shak- 
speare; and even he can tell nothing, except to the 
Shakspeare in us; that is, to our most apprehensive 
and sympathetic hour. He cannot step from off his 
tripod, and give us anecdotes of his inspirations. 
Read the antique documents extricated, analyzed, 
and compared by the assiduous Dyce and Collier; and 
now read one of those skyey sentences — aerolites — 
which seem to have fallen out of heaven, and which 
not your experience, but the man Tvdthin the breast, 
has accepted as words of fate; and tell me if they 
match; if the former account in any manner for the 
latter; or which gives the most historical insight into 
the man. 

[16] Hence, though our external history is so mea- 
gre, yet, with Shakspeare for biographer, instead of 
Aubrey and Rowe, we have really the information 
which is material, that which describes character and 
fortune, that which, if we were about to meet the 
man and deal with him, would most import us to 
know. We have his recorded convictions on those 
questions which knock for answer at every heart — on 
life and death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on the 
prizes of life, and the ways whereby we come at them; 
on the characters of men, and the influences, occult 
and open, which affect their fortunes; and on those 
mysterious and demoniacal powers which defy our 
science, and which yet interweave their malice and 
their gift in our brightest hours. Who ever read the 



244 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

volume of the Sonnets without finding that the poet 
had there revealed, under masks that are no masks 
to the intelligent, the lore of friendship and of love; the 
confusion of sentiments in the most susceptible, and, 
at the same time, the most intellectual, of men? What 
trait of his private mind has he hidden in his dramas? 
One can discern, in his ample pictures of the gentle- 
man and the king, what forms and humanities pleased 
him; his delight in troops of friends, in large hospital- 
ity, in cheerful giving. Let Timon, let Warwick, let 
Antonio the merchant, answer for his great heart. 
So far from Shakspeare's being the least known, he 
is the one person, in all modern history, known to us. 
What point of morals, of manners, of economy, of 
philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, 
has he not settled? What mystery has he not signified 
his knowledge of? What office, or function, or dis- 
trict of man's work has he not remembered? What 
king has he not taught state, as Talma taught Na- 
poleon? What maiden has not found him finer than 
her delicacy? What lover has he not outloved? What 
sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he 
not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior? 

[17] Some able and appreciating critics think no 
criticism on Shakspeare valuable that does not rest 
purely on the dramatic merit; that he is falsely judged 
as poet and philosopher. I think as highly as these 
critics of his dramatic merit, but still think it secondary. 
He w^as a full man, who liked to talk; a brain exhaling 
thoughts and images, which, seeking vent, found the 
drama next at hand. Had he been less, we should 



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET 245 

have had to consider how well he filled his place, how 
good a dramatist he was, — and he is the best in the 
world. But it turns out that what he has to say is of 
that weight as to withdraw some attention from the 
vehicle; and he is like some saint whose history is to 
be rendered into all languages, into verse and prose, 
into songs and pictures, and cut up into proverbs; 
so that the occasion which gave the saint's meaning 
the form of a conversation, or of a prayer, or of a code 
of laws, is immaterial, compared with the universality 
of its application. So it fares with the wise Shakspeare 
and his book of life. He wrote the airs for all our 
modern music; he wrote the text of modern life; the 
text of manners; he drew the man of England and 
Europe: the father of the man in America; he drew 
the man, and described the day, and what is done in 
it; he read the hearts of men and women, their probity, 
and their second thought, and wiles; the wiles of inno- 
cence, and the transitions by which virtues and vices 
slide into their contraries : he could divide the mother's 
part from the father's part in the face of the child, 
or draw the fine demarcations of freedom and of fate; 
he knew the laws of repression which make the police 
of nature; and all the sweets and all the terrors of 
human lot lay in his mind as truly but as softly as 
the landscape lies on the eye. And the importance 
of this wisdom of life sinks the form, as, of Drama 
or Epic, out of notice. 'Tis like making a question 
concerning the paper on which a king's message is 
written. 

[18] Shakspeare is as much out of the category of 



246 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

eminent authors as he is out of the crowd. He is in- 
conceivably wise; the others conceivably. A good 
reader can, in a sort, nestle into Plato's brain, and 
think from thence; but not into Shakspeare's. We 
are still out of doors. For executive faculty, for crea- 
tion, Shakspeare is unique. Xo man can imagine 
it better. He was the farthest reach of subtlety com- 
patible with an individual self, — the subtilest of authors, 
and only just within the possibility of authorship. 
With this wisdom of life is the equal endowment of 
imaginative and of lyric power. He clothed the 
creatures of his legend with form and sentiments, as 
if they were people who had lived under his roof; and 
few real men have left such distinct characters as 
these fictions. And they spoke in language as sweet 
as it was fit. Yet his talents never seduced him into 
an ostentation, nor did he harp on one string. An 
omnipresent humanity co-ordinates all his faculties. 
Give a man of talents a story to tell, and his partiality 
will presently appear. He has certain observations, 
opinions, topics, which have some accidental promi- 
nence, and which he disposes all to exhibit. He crams 
this part, and starves that other part, consulting not 
the fitness of the thing, but his fitness and strength. 
But Shakspeare has no peculiarity, no importunate 
topic; but all is duly given: no veins, no curiosities; 
no cow-painter, no bird-fancier, no mannerist is he; 
he has no discoverable egotism; the great he tells 
greatly, the small subordinately. He is wise without 
emphasis or assertion; he is strong, who lifts the land 
into mountain slopes without effort, and by the same 



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET 247 

rule as she floats a bubble in the air, and Hkes as well 
to do the one as the other. This makes that equality 
of power in farce, tragedy, narrative, and love-songs; 
a merit so incessant, that each reader is incredulous 
of the perception of other readers. 

[19] This power of expression, or of transferring the 
inmost truth of things into music and verse, makes 
him the type of the poet, and has added a new prob- 
lem to metaphysics. This is that which throws him 
into natural history, as a main production of the 
globe, and as announcing new eras and ameliorations. 
Things were mirrored in his poetry without loss or 
blur; he could paint the fine with precision, the great 
with compass; the tragic and the comic indifferently. 
and without any distortion or favor. He carried his 
powerful execution into minute details, to a hair point ; 
finishes an eyelash or a dimple as firmly as he draws a 
mountain; and yet these, like nature's, will bear the 
scrutiny of the solar microscope. 

[20] In short, he is the chief example to prove that 
more or less of production, more or fewer pictures is 
a thing indifferent. He had the power to make one 
picture. Daguerre learned how to let one flower 
etch its image on his plate of iodine; and then pro- 
ceeds at leisure to etch a million. There are always 
objects; but there was never representation. Here 
is perfect representation, at last; and now let the 
world of figures sit for their portraits. No recipe 
can be given for the making of a Shakspeare; but 
the possibility of the translation of things into song 
is demonstrated. 



248 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

[21] His lyric power lies in the genius of the piece. 
The sonnets, though their excellence is lost in the 
splendor of the dramas, are as inimitable as they; 
and it is not a merit of lines, but a total merit of the 
piece; like the tone of voice of some incomparable 
person, so is this a speech of poetic beings, and any 
clause as unproducible now as a whole poem. 

[22] Though the speeches in the play and single lines 
have a beauty which tempts the ear to pause on them 
for their euphuism, yet the sentence is so loaded with 
meaning, and so linked with its foregoers and fol- 
lowers, that the logician is satisfied. His means are 
as admirable as his ends; every subordinate inven- 
tion, by which he helps himself to connect some irrec- 
oncilable opposites, is a poem too. He is not reduced 
to dismount and walk, because his horses are running 
off with him in some distant direction: he always rides. 

[23] The finest poetry was first experience; but the 
thought has suffered a transformation since it was an 
experience. Cultivated men often attain a good de- 
gree of skill in writing verses; but it is easy to read, 
through their poems, their personal history; any one 
acquainted with parties can name every figure: this 
is Andrew, and that is Rachel. The sense thus re- 
mains prosaic. It is a caterpillar with wings, and not 
yet a butterfly. In the poet's mind the fact has gone 
quite over into the new element of thought, and has 
lost all that is exu\dal. This generosity abides with 
Shakspeare. We say, from the truth and closeness 
of his pictures, that he knows the lesson by heart. 
Yet there is not a trace of egotism. 



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET 249 

[24] One more royal trait properly belongs to the 
poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which no man 
can be a poet, — for beauty is his aim. He loves vir- 
tue, not for its obligation but for its grace; he delights 
in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light 
that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy 
and hilarity, he sheds over the universe. Epicurus 
relates that poetry hath such charms that a lover 
might forsake his mistress to partake of them. And 
the true bards have been noted for their firm and 
cheerful temper. Homer lies in sunshine; Chaucer 
is glad and erect; and Saadi says, '*It was rumored 
abroad that I was penitent; but what had I to do with 
repentance?'' Not less sovereign and cheerful, — 
much more sovereign and cheerful is the tone of Shak- 
speare. His name suggests joy and emancipation to 
the heart of men. It he should appear in any com- 
pany of human souls, who would not march in his 
troop? He touches nothing that does not borrow 
health and longevity from his festal style. 

[25] And now, how stands the account of man with 
this bard and benefactor, when in solitude, shutting 
our ears to the reverberations of his fame, we seek 
to strike the balance? Solitude has austere lessons; 
it can teach us to spare both heroes and poets; and 
it weighs Shakspeare also, and finds him to share the 
halfness and imperfection of humanity. 

[26] Shakspeare, Homer, Dante, Chaucer, saw the 
splendor of meaning that plays over the visible world; 
knew that a tree had another use than for apples, and 



250 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

corn another than for meal, and the ball of the earth 
than for tillage and roads; that these things bore a 
second and finer harvest to the mind, being emblems 
of its thoughts, and conveying in all their natural 
history a certain mute commentary on human life. 
Shakspeare employed them as colors to compose his 
picture. He rested in their beauty; and never took 
the step which seemed inevitable to such genius, 
namely, to explore the virtue which resides in these 
symbols, and imparts this power: — what is that which 
they themselves say? He converted the elements, 
which waited on his command, into entertainments. 
He was master of the revels to mankind. Is it not as 
if one should have, through majestic powers of science 
the comets given into his hand, or the planets and their 
moons, and should draw them from their orbits to 
glare with the municipal fireworks on a holiday night, 
and advertise in all towns: — ''Very superior pyro- 
techny this evening!" Are the agents of nature, and 
the power to understand them, worth no more than 
a street serenade, or the breath of a cigar? One 
remembers again the trumpet-text in the Koran: — 
*^'The heavens and the earth, and all that is between 
them, think ye we have created them in jest?'' As 
long as the question is of talent and mental power, the 
world of men has not his equal to show. But when 
the question is to life, and its materials, and its auxil- 
iaries, how does he profit me? What does it signify? 
It is but a Twelfth Night, or Midsummer-Night's 
Dream, or a Winter Evening's Tale; what signifies 
another picture more or less? The Egyptian ver- 



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET 251 

diet of the Shakspeare Soeieties comes to mind, that 
he was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot marry 
this fact to his verse. Other admirable men have 
led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought; 
but this man, in wide contrast. Had he been less, 
had he reached only the common measure of great 
authors, of Bacon, Milton, Tasso, Cervantes, w^e 
might leave the fact in the twilight of human fate; 
but that this man of men, he who gave to the science 
of mind a new and larger subject than had ever existed, 
and planted the standard of humanity some furlongs 
forward into Chaos, — that he should not be wise for 
himself, — it must even go into the world's history, 
that the best poet led an obscure and profane life, 
using his -genius for the public amusement. 

[27] Well, other men, priest and prophet, Israelite, 
German, and Swede, beheld the same objects; they 
also saw through them that which was contained. 
And to what purpose? The beauty straightway van- 
ished; they read commandments, all-excluding moun- 
tainous duty; an obligation, a sadness, as of piled 
mountains, fell on them, and life became ghastly, 
joyless, a pilgrim's progress, a probation, beleagured 
round with doleful histories of Adam's fall and curse 
behind us; with doomsdays and purgatorial and penal 
fires before us; and the heart of the seer and the heart 
of the listener sank in them. 

[28] It must be conceded that these are half -views 
of half -men. The world still wants its poet-priest, a 
reconciler, who shall not trifle, with Shakspeare the 
player, nor shall grope in graves, with Swedenborg 



252 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act with 
equal inspiration. For knowledge will brighten the 
sunshine; right is more beautiful than private affec- 
tion; and love is compatible with universal wisdom. 

QUESTIONS 

(Numbers refer to pages and paragraphs.) 

228:1. What is the leading thought of this paragraph? Is it 
familiar to you, or new? 

229 : 2. What, according to Emerson, is the condition upon which 
a man may become great? Explain, and give illustration from 
history. 

233:7. Select a sentence for quotation. 

236:9. Does this paragraph discuss Shakspere? Does the preced- 
ing one? Can you make a general statement as to a characteristic 
of Emerson's writings? 

241 : 14. Select from this paragraph a sentence which shows Emer- 
son's power of using w^ords in a new way. 

246:18. Point out a good example of Emerson's use of figurative 
expressions. 

250: 26. What is Emerson's one adverse criticism upon Shakspere? 

What has Emerson read by way of preparation for writing this 
essay? See especially par. 6, 10 and 16. 

How much of this essay may be considered as introductory'? 
What paragraphs form the conclusion? Show hov/ both introduction 
and conclusion are related to the essay proper. 

Compare the structure of this essay as a wiiole with that of 
another essay studied — say, on Nature, Politics, or Heroism. What 
difference do you notice? To what may this difference be attributed? 



, THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

[1] Mr. President and Gentlemen: I greet you 
on the recommencement of our literary year. Our 
anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough 
of labor. We do not meet for games of strength or 
skill, for the recitation of histories, tragedies, and 
odes, like the ancient Greeks; for parliaments of love 
and poesy, like the Troubadours ; nor for the advance- 
ment of science, like our contemporaries in the British 
and European capitals. Thus far our holiday has 
been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love 
of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters 
any more. As such, it is precious as the sign of an 
indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already 
come when it ought to be, and will be, something 
else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent 
will look from under its iron lids, and fill the post- 
poned expectations of the world with something better 
than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of 
dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning 
of other lands, draws to a close. The millions that 
around us are rushing into life cannot always be fed 
on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events, 
actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing them- 
selves. Who can doubt that poetry will revive and 
lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp 
which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, 
shall one day be the pole-star for a thousand years? 

253 



254 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

[2] In this hope I accept the topic which not only 
usage, but the nature of our association, seem to pre- 
scribe to this day, — the American Scholar. Year 
by year we come up hither to read one more chapter 
of his biography. Let us inquire what light new days 
and events have thrown on his character and his 
hopes. 

[3] It is one of those fables which, out of an un- 
known antiquity, convey an unlooked-for wisdom, 
that the gods, in the beginning, divided ]\Ian into 
men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just 
as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to 
answer its end. 

[4] The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sub- 
lime; that there is One Man, — ^present to all partic- 
ular men only partially, or through one faculty; and 
that you must take the w^hole society to find the whole 
man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an en- 
gineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and 
statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided 
or social state these functions are parcelled out to 
individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the 
joint work, whilst each other performs his. The 
fable implies that the indi\ddual, to possess himself, 
must sometimes return from his own labor to 
embrace all the other laborers. But, unfortunately, 
this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so 
distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely sub- 
divided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops 
and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one 
in which the members have suffered amputation from 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 255 

the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters 
— a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but 
never a man. 

[5] Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into 
many things. The planter, who is Man sent out 
into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by 
any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees 
his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and 
sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm. 
The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth 
to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, 
and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes 
a form; the attorney, a statute-book; the mechanic, 
a machine; the sailor, a rope of a ship. 

[6] In this distribution of functions the scholar is 
the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is Man 
Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim 
of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still 
worse, the parrot of other men's thinking. 

[7] In this view of him, as IMan Thinking, the theory 
of his office is contained. Him Nature solicits with 
all her placid, all her monitory pictures; him the past 
instructs; him the future invites. Is not, indeed, 
every man a student, and do not all things exist for the 
student's behoof? And, finally, is not the true scholar 
the only true master? But the old oracle said, ''All 
things have two handles: beware of the wrong one.'' 
In life, too often the scholar errs with mankind and 
forfeits his privilege. Let us see him in his school, 
and consider him in reference to the main influences 
he receives. 



256 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

[8] I. The first in time and the first in importance 
of the influences upon the mind is that of Nature. 
Every day, the sun; and, after sunset, Night and her 
stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. 
Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding 
and beholden. The scholar is he of all men whom 
this spectacle most engages. He must settle its value 
in his mind. What is Nature to him? There is never 
a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable 
continuity of this web of God, but always circular 
power returning into itself. Therein it resembles his 
own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he never 
can find, — so entire, so boundless. Far, too, as her 
splendors shine, system on system, shooting like rays, 
upw^ard, downward, without centre, without circum- 
ference, — in the mass and in the particle. Nature 
hastens to render account of herself to the mind. 
Classification begins. To the young mind, every- 
thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by it 
finds how to join two things, and see in them one 
nature; then three, then three thousand; and so tyran- 
nized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on 
tying things together, diminishing anomalies, dis- 
covering roots running under ground, whereby con- 
trary and remote things cohere, and flower out from 
one stem. It presently learns that since the dawn of 
history there has been a constant accumulation and 
classifying of facts. But what is classification but 
the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and 
are not foreign, but have a law which is also a law 
of the human mind? The astronomer discovers 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 257 

that geometry, a pure abstraction of the human mind, 
is the measure of planetary motion. The chemist 
finds proportions and intelligible method throughout 
matter; and science is nothing but the finding of 
analogy, identity, in the most remote parts. The 
ambitious soul sits down before each refractory fact; 
one after another reduces all strange constitutions, 
all new powers, to their class and their law, and goes 
on forever to animate the last fibre of organization, 
the outskirts of nature, by insight. 

[9] Thus to him, to this school-boy under the bend- 
ing dome of day, is suggested that he and it proceed 
from one root; one is leaf and one is flower; relation, 
sympathy, stirring in every vein. And w^hat is that 
Root? Is not that the soul of his soul? A thought 
too bold, a dream too wild. Yet when this spiritual 
light shall have revealed the law of more earthly 
natures, when he has learned to worship the soul, 
and to see that the natural philosophy that now is, 
is only the first gropings of its gigantic hand, he shall 
look forward to an ever-expanding knowledge as to 
a becoming creator. He shall see that Nature is the 
opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. 
One is seal and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty 
of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own 
mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure of 
his attainments. So much of Nature as he is igno- 
rant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet 
possess. And, in fine, the ancient precept, ''Know 
thyself," and the modern precept, ''Study Nature," 
become at last one maxim. 



258 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

[10] IL The next great influence into the spirit of 
the scholar is the mind of the Past — in whatever form, 
whether of literature, of art, of institutions, that mind 
is inscribed. Books are the best type of the influ- 
ence of the past, and perTiaps we shall get at the truth 
— learn the amount of this influence more conven- 
iently — by considering their value alone. 

[11] The theory of books is noble. The scholar of 
the first age received into him the world around; 
brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his 
own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him 
life; it w^ent out from him truth. It carne to him short- 
lived actions; it went out from him immortal thoughts. 
It came to him business; it went from him poetry. 
It was dead fact; now it is quick thought. It can 
stand and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it 
now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth 
of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so 
long does it sing„ 

[12] Or, I might say, it depends on how far the pro- 
cess had gone of transmuting life into truth. In pro- 
portion to the completeness of the distillation, so will 
the purity and imperishableness of the product be. 
But none is quite perfect. As no air-pump can by 
any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can any 
artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the 
perishable from his book, or write a book of pure 
thought that shall be as efficient in all respects to a 
remote posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to 
the second age. Each age, it is found, must write 
its own books; or rather, each generation for the next 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 259 

succeeding. The books of an older period will not 
fit this. 

[13] Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacred- 
ness which attaches to the act of creation — the act 
of thought — is transferred to the record. The poet 
chanting was felt to be a divine man; henceforth the 
chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise 
spirit: henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect; 
as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. 
Instantly the book becomes noxious; the guide is a 
tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the 
multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, 
having once so opened, having once received this 
book, stands upon it and makes an outcry if it is dis- 
paraged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written 
on it by thinkers, not by ]\Ian Thinking; by men of 
talent, that is, who start T\Tong, who set out from 
accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of princi- 
ples. Meek young men grow up in libraries believ- 
ing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, 
which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that 
Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in 
libraries when they wrote these books. 

[14] Hence, instead of Man Thinking we have the 
bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class who value 
books as such; not as related to Nature and the human 
constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate 
with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers 
of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of 
all degrees. 

[15] Books are the best of things, well used ; abused, 



260 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

among the worst. ^Miat is the right use? What is 
the one end, which all means go to effect? They are 
for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a 
book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out 
of mv own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a 
system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the 
active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every 
man contains within him, although, in almost all 
men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active 
sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. In 
this action it is genius; not the privilege of here and 
there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man. 
In its essence it is progressive. The book, the college, 
the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with 
some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they, 
• — let us hold by this. They pin me dov^n. They 
look backward and not forward. But genius looks 
forward; the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not 
in his hindhead; man hopes; genius creates. What- 
ever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure 
efflux of the Deity is not his; cinders and smoke there 
may be, but not yet flame. There are creative man- 
ners, there are creative actions, and creative words; 
manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no cus- 
tom or authority, but springing spontaneous from the 
mind's own sense of good and fair. 

[16] On the other part, instead of being its own seer, 
let it receive from another mind its truth, though it 
were in torrents of light, without periods of solitude, 
inquest, and self-recovery, and a fatal disservice is 
done. Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of 




THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 261 



genius by over-influence. The literature of every 
nation bears me witness. The EngUsh dramatic 
poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred years. 

[17] Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so 
it be sternly subordinated. INIan Thinking must not 
be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the 
scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly 
the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's 
transcripts of their readings. But when the inter- 
vals of darkness come, as come they must, — when 
the sun is hid, and the stars withdraw their shining, 
— we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their 
ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the 
dawn is. We hear, that we may speak. The Arabian 
proverb says, ''A fig-tree, looking on a fig-tree, becometh 
fruitful." 

[18] It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure 
we derive from the best books. They impress us 
wdth the conviction that one nature wrote and the same 
reads. W^e read the verses of one of the great Eng- 
lish poets, of Chaucer, of Marvell, of Dryden, with 
the most modern joy, — with a pleasure, I mean, which 
is in great part caused by the abstraction of all time 
from their verses. There is some awe mixed with 
the joy of our surprise when this poet, who lived in 
some past world two or three hundred years ago, says 
that which lies close to my own soul, that which I 
also had wellnigh thought and said. But for the evi- 
dence thence afforded to the philosophical doctrine 
of the identity of all minds, Ave should suppose some 
preestablished harmony, some foresight of souls that 



262 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

were to be, and some preparation of stores for their 
future wants, like the fact observed in insects, who 
lay up food before death for the young grub they shall 
never see. 

[19] I would not be hurried by any love of system, 
by any exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the 
Book. We all know that as the human body can be 
nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass 
and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed 
by any knowledge. And great and heroic men have 
existed who had almost no other information than 
by the printed page. I only would say, that it needs 
a strong head to bear that diet. One must be an 
inventor to read well. As the proverb says, ''He that 
would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must 
carrv out the wealth of the Indies.'' There is then 
creative reading as well as creative writing. When 
the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page 
of whatever book we read becomes luminous with 
manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly signifi- 
cant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the 
world. We then see, what is always true, that, as 
the seer's hour of vision is short and rare among heavy 
days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least 
part of his volume. The discerning will read, in his 
Plato or Shakspeare, only that least part, — only the 
authentic utterances of the oracle; all the rest he 
rejects, were it never so many times Plato's and Shak- 
speare's. 

[20] Of course, there is a portion of reading quite 
indispensable to a wise man. History and exact 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 263 

science he must learn by laborious reading. Colleges, 
in like manner, have their indispensable office, — to 
teach elements. But they can only highly serve us 
when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they 
gather from far every ray of various genius to their 
hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set 
the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and 
knowledge are natures in w^hich apparatus and pre- 
tension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foun- 
dations, though of towns of gold, can never counter- 
vail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, 
and our American colleges will recede in their public 
importance, whilst they grow richer every year. 

[21] III. There goes in the world a notion that the 
scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, — as 
unfit for any handiwork or public labor, as a pen- 
knife for an axe. The so-called ''practical men'' 
sneer at speculative men, as if, because they specu- 
late or see, they could do nothing. I have heard it 
said that the clergy — ^w^ho are always, more univer- 
sally than any other class, the scholars of their day 
— are addressed as women; that the rough, spontane- 
ous conversation of men they do not hear, but only 
a mincing and diluted speech. They are often vir- 
tually disfranchised; and, indeed, there are advocates 
for their celibacy. As far as this is true of the studious 
classes, it is not just and wise. Action is with the 
scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, 
he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never 
ripen into truth. Whilst the world hano;s before the 



264 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. 
Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar 
without the heroic mind. The preamble of thought, 
the transition through which it passes from the uncon- 
scious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do 
I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose 
words are loaded with life, and whose not. 

[22] The world — this shadow of the soul, or other 
me — lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys 
which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted 
with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding 
tumult. I grasp the hands of those next me, and 
take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, taught 
by an instinct, that so shall the dumb abyss be vocal 
with speech. I pierce its order; I dissipate its fear; 
I dispose of it within the circuit of my expanding 
life. So much only of life as' I know by experience, 
so much of the wilderness have I vanquished and 
planted, or so far have I extended my being, my domin- 
ion. I do not see how any man can afford, for the 
sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action 
in which he can partake. It is pearls and rubies to 
his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, 
are instructors in eloquence and msdom. The true 
scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed 
by, as a loss of power. 

[23] It is the raw material out of which the intellect 
moulds her splendid products. A strange process 
too, this, by which experience is converted into thought, 
as a mulberry leaf is converted into satin. The manu- 
facture goes forward at all hours. 




THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 265 



[24] The actions and events of our childhood and 
youth are now matters of calmest observation. They 
lie like fair pictures in the air. Not so with our recent 
actions, — with the business which we now have in 
hand. On this we are quite unable to speculate. 
Our affections as yet circulate through it. We no 
more feel or know it, than we feel the feet, or the 
hand, or the brain of our body. The new deed is 
yet a part of life, — remains for a time immersed in 
our unconscious life. In some contemplative hour 
it detaches itself from the life like a ripe fruit, to be- 
come a thought of the mind. Instantly it is raised, 
transfigured; the corruptible has put on incorruption. 
Henceforth it is an object of beauty, however base 
its origin and neighborhood. Observe, too, the im- 
possibility of antedating this act. In its grub state, 
it cannot fly, it cannot shine, it is a dull grub. But 
suddenly, without observation, the selfsame thing 
unfurls beautiful wdngs, and is an angel of wisdom. 
So is there no fact, no event, in our private history 
which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, 
inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body 
into the emp^Tcan. Cradle and infancy, school and 
playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules, 
the love of little maids and berries, and many another 
fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; 
friend and relative, profession and party, town and 
country, nation and world, must also soar and sing. 

[25] Of course, he who has put forth his total strength 
in fit actions has the richest return of wisdom. I will 
not shut myself out of this globe of action, and trans- 



266 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

plant an oak into a flower-pot, there to hunger and 
pine; nor trust the revenue of some single faculty, 
and exhaust one vein of thought, much like those 
Savoyards, v\'ho, getting their livelihood by car^'ing 
shepherds, shepherdesses, and smoking Dutchmen for 
all Europe, went out one day to the mountain to find 
stock, and discovered that they had whittled up the 
last of their pine-trees. Authors we have in num- 
bers who have written out their vein, and who, moved 
by a commendable prudence, sail for Greece or Pal- 
estine, follow the trapper into the prairie, or ramble 
round Algiers, to replenish their merchantable stock. 

[26] If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar 
would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary. 
Years are well spent in country labors; in town, in 
the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank inter- 
course with many men and women; in science; in 
art, — to the one end of mastering in all their facts a 
language by which to illustrate and embody our per- 
ceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how 
much he has already lived, through the poverty or 
the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the 
quarry from whence we get tiles and cope-stones for 
the masonry of to-day. This is the way to learn 
grammar. Colleges and books only copy the lan- 
guap-e which the field and the work-yard made. 

[27] But the final value of action, hke that of books, 
and better than books, is, that it is a resource. That 
great principle of Undulation in nature, that shows 
itself in the inspiring and expiring of the breath; in 
desire and satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 267 

day and night; in heat and cold; and as yet more 
deeply ingrained in every atom and every fluid, is 
known to us under the name of Polarity, — these '*fits 
of easy transmission and reflection," as Newton called 
them, are the law of Nature because they are the law 
of spirit. 

[28] The mind now thinks, now acts; and each fit 
reproduces the other. When the artist has exhausted 
his materials, when the fancy no longer paints, when 
thoughts are no longer apprehended, and books are 
a weariness, — he has always the resource to live. 
Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the 
function. LiAing is the functionary. The stream 
retreats to its source. A great soul will be strong to 
live, as well as strong to think. Does he lack organ 
or medium to impart his truths? He can still fall 
back on this elemental force of li^dng them. This 
is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. Let the 
grandeur of justice shine in his affairs. Let the beauty 
of affection cheer his lowly roof. Those ''far from 
fame," who dwell and act with him, ^A\\ feel the force 
of his constitution in the doings and passages of the 
day better than it can be measured by any public 
and designed display. Time shall teach him that 
the scholar loses no hour which the man lives. Herein 
he unfolds the sacred germ of his instinct, screened 
from influence. What is lost in seemliness is gained 
in strength. Not out of those, on whom systems of 
education have exhausted their culture, comes the 
helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, 
but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible 



2G8 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Druids and berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shak- 
speare. 

[29] 1 hear, therefore, with joy whatever is begin- 
ning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor 
to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and 
the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. 
And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are 
invited to work; only be this limitation observed, 
that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity 
sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and 
modes of action. 

[30] I have now spoken of the education of the 
scholar by Nature, by books, and by action. It re- 
mains to say somewhat of his duties. 

[31] They are such as become Man Thinking. 
They may all be comprised in self-trust. The office 
of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men 
by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies 
the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. 
Flamsteed and Herschel, in their glazed observato- 
ries, may catalogue the stars with the praise of all 
men, and, the results being splendid and useful, honor 
is sure. But he, in his private observatory, cata- 
lop^uino; obscure and nebulous stars of the human 
mind, which as yet no man has thought of as such, 
— ^watching days and months, sometimes, for a few 
facts; correcting still his old records, — must relin- 
quish display and immediate fame. In the long 
period of his preparation he must betray often an 
ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 269 

the disdain of the able, who shoulder him aside. Long 
he must stammer in his speech; often forego the hving 
for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept — how 
often! — ^poverty and soUtude. For the ease and 
pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, 
the education, the religion of society, he takes the 
cross of making his own, and, of course, the self- 
accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty 
and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling 
\ines in the way of the self-relying and self -directed ; 
and the state of \irtual hostility in which he seems to 
stand to society, and especially to educated society. 
For all this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to 
find consolation in exercising the highest functions 
of human nature. He is one who raises himself from 
private considerations, and breathes and lives on 
public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world's 
eye. He is the world's heart. He is to resist the 
vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to bar- 
barism, by preserving and communicating heroic 
sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, 
and the conclusions of history. Whatsoever oracles 
the human heart, in all emergencies, in all sol- 
emn hours, has uttered as its commentary on 
the world of actions, — these he shall receive and 
impart. And whatsoever new verdict Reason from 
her inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men 
and events of to-day,— this he shall hear and pro- 
mulgate. 

[32] These being his functions, it becomes him to 
feel all confidence in himself, and to defer never to 



270 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

the popular cry. He and he only knows the world. 
The world of any moment is the merest appearance. 
Some great decorum, some fetish of a government, 
some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by 
half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if 
all depended on this particular up or down. The 
odds are that the whole question is not worth the 
poorest thought which the scholar has lost in listen- 
ing to the controversy. Let him not quit his belief 
that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and 
honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of 
doom. In silence, in steadiness, in severe abstrac- 
tion, let him hold by himself; add observation to obser- 
vation, patient of neglect, patient of reproach; and bide 
his own time, — happy enough if he can satisfy him- 
self alone, that this day he has seen something truly. 
Success treads on every right step. For the instinct 
is sure that prompts him to tell his brother what he 
thinks. He then learns that in going down into the 
secrets of his own mind he has descended into the 
secrets of all minds. He learns that he who has 
mastered any law in his private thoughts is master 
to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, 
and of all into w^hose language his own can be trans- 
lated. The poet, in utter solitude remembering his 
spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is found 
to have recorded that which men in crowded cities 
find true for them also. The orator distrusts at first 
the fitness of his frank confessions, — ^his want of 
knowledge of the persons he addresses, — until he 
finds that he is the complement of his hearers; that 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 271 

they drink his words because he fulfills for them their 
own nature; the deeper he dives into his privatest, 
secretest presentiment, to his wonder he finds this 
is the most acceptable, most public, and univer- 
sally true. The people delight in it; the better 
part of every man feels, This is my music; this is 
myself. 

[33] In self -trust all the virtues are comprehended. 
Free should the scholar be, — free and brave. Free 
even to the definition of freedom, '^ without any hind- 
rance that does not arise out of his own constitution.'' 
Brave; for fear is a thing which a scholar by his very 
function puts behind him. Fear always springs from 
ignorance. It is a shame to him if his tranquillity, 
amid dangerous times, arise from the presumption 
that, like children and women, his is a protected class; 
or if he seek a temporary peace by the diversion of 
his thoughts from politics or vexed questions, hiding 
his head like an ostrich in the flowering bushes, peep- 
ing into microscopes, and turning rh\Tiies, as a boy 
whistles to keep his courage up. So is the danger a 
danger still; so is the fear worse. Manlike let him 
turn and face it. Let him look into its eye and search 
its nature, inspect its origin, — see the whelping of 
this lion, which lies no great way back; he will then 
find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature 
and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the 
other side, and can henceforth defy it, and pass on 
superior. The world is his, who can see through its 
pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind cus- 
tom, what overgrown error you behold, is there 



272 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

only by sufferance, — ^by your sufferance. See it to 
be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal 
blow. 

[34] Yes, we are the cowed — ^we the trustless. It is 
a mischievous notion that we are come late into Nature; 
that the world was finished a long time ago. As the 
Avorld was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so 
it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it. 
To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt them- 
selves to it as they may; but in proportion as a man 
has anything in him divine, the firmament flows be- 
fore him and takes his signet and form. Not he is 
great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my 
state of mind. They are the kings of the world who 
give the color of their present thought to all nature 
and all art, and persuade men by the cheerful serenity 
of their carrying the matter, that this thing which 
they do is the apple which the ages have desired to 
pluck, now at last ripe, and inviting nations to the 
harvest. The great man makes the great thing. 
Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the 
table. Linnaeus makes botany the most alluring of 
studies; and wins it from the farmer and the herb- 
woman; Davy, chemistry; and Cuvier, fossils. The 
day is always his, who works in it with serenity and 
great aims. The unstable estimates of men crowd to7 
him whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped 
waves of the Atlantic follow the moon. 

[35] For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than 
can be fathomed, darker than can be enlightened. I 
might not carry with me the feeling of my audience 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 273 

in stating my own belief. But I have already shown 
the ground of my hope, in adverting to the doctrine 
that man is one. I believe man has been wronged; 
he has wronged himself. He has almost lost the 
light that can lead him back to his prerogatives. Men' 
are become of no account. Men in history, men in 
the world of to-day are bugs, are spawn, and are called 
'*the mass'' and ''the herd.'' In a century, in a mil- 
lennium, one or two men; that is to say, one or two 
approximations to the right state of every man. All 
the rest behold in the hero or the poet their own green 
and crude being, — ripened; yes, and are content to 
be less, so that may attain to its full stature. What 
a testimony, full of grandeur, full of pity, is borne to 
the demands of his own nature by the poor clansman, 
the poor partisan, who rejoices in the glory of his 
chief. The poor and the low find some amends to 
their immense moral capacity for their acquiescence 
in a political and social inferiority. They are con- 
tent to be brushed like flies from the path of a great 
person, so that justice shall be done by him to that 
common nature which it is the dearest desire of all 
to see enlarged and glorified. They sun themselves 
in the great man's light, and feel it to be their own 
element. They cast the dignity of man from their 
downtrod selves upon the shoulders of a hero, and 
will perish to add one drop of blood to make that 
great heart beat, those giant sinews combat and con- 
quer. He lives for us, and we live in him. 

[36] Men such as they are, very naturally seek 
money or power; and power because it is as good 



274 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

as money, — the ''spoils/' so called, ''of office." And 
why not? for they aspire to the highest, and this, in 
their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake 
them, and they shall quit the false good, and leap to 
the true, and leave governments to clerks and desks. 
This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual domes- 
tication of the idea of Culture. The main enterprise 
of the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuild- 
ing of a man. Here are the materials strewn along 
the ground. The private life of one man shall be a 
more illustrious monarchy, — more formidable to its 
enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its 
friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, 
rightly \iewed, comprehendeth the particular natures 
of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor, 
has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day 
I can do for mvself . The books which once we valued 
more than the apple of the eye, we have quite ex- 
hausted. What is that but sapng that we have come 
up with the point of \dew which the universal mind 
took through the eyes of one scribe; we have been 
that man, and have passed on. First one, then another, 
we drain all cisterns, and, waxing greater by all these 
supplies, we crave a better and more abundant food. 
The man has never lived that can feed us ever. The 
human mind cannot be enshrined in a person who 
shall set a barrier on any one side to this unbounded, 
unboundable empire. It is one central fire, which, 
flaming now^ out of the lips of Etna, lightens the capes 
of Sicily; and now out of the throat of Vesuvius, illu- 
minates the towers and \'ineyards of Naples. It is 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 275 

one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is 
one soul which animates all men. 

[37] But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this 
abstraction of the Scholar. I ought not to delay longer 
to add what I have to say of nearer reference to the 
time and to this countrv. 

[38] Historically there is thought to be a difference 
in the ideas which predominate over sux^cessive epochs, 
and there are data for marking the genius of the Classic, 
of the Romantic, and now of the Reflective or Philo- 
sophical age. With the views I have intimated of 
the oneness or the identity of the mind through all 
individuals, I do not much dwell on these differences. 
In fact, I believe each individual passes through all 
three. The boy is a Greek; the youth, romantic; 
the adult, reflective. I deny not, however, that a 
revolution in the leading idea may be distinctly enough 
traced. 

[39] Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion. 
Must that needs be evil? We, it seems, are critical; 
we are embarrassed with second thoughts; we can- 
not enjoy anything for hankering to know whereof 
the pleasure consists; we are lined with eyes; we see 
with our feet; the time is infected with Hamlet's un- 
happiness, — 

^^Sicklied o^er with the pale cast of thought." 

Is it so bad then? Sight is the last thing to be pitied - 
Would we be blind? Do we fear lest we should out- 
see Nature and God, and drink truth dry? I look 



276 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

upon the discontent of the Hterary class as a mere 
announcement of the fact that they find themselves 
not in the state of mind of their fathers, and regret 
the coming state as untried; as a boy dreads the water 
before he has learned that he can swim. If there is any 
period one would desire to be born in, is it not the 
age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand 
side by side, and admit of being compared; when the 
energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; 
when the historic glories of the old can be compen- 
sated by the rich possibilities of the new era? This 
time, like all times, is a ^ry good one, if we but know 
what to do with it. 

[40] I read with joy some of the auspicious signs of 
the coming days, as they glimmer already through 
poetry and art, through philosophy and science, 
through church and state. 

[41] One of these sigiis is the fact that the same 
movement which affected the elevation of what was 
called the lowest class in the state, assumed in literature 
a very marked and as benign an aspect. Instead of 
the sublime and beautiful; the near, the low, the com- 
mon, was explored and poetized. That which had 
been negligently trodden under foot by those who 
were harnessing and p^o^isioning themselves for long 
journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to 
be richer than all foreign parts. The literature of 
the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of 
the street, the meaning of household life, are the 
topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign, 
is it not? of new \dgor, when the extremities are made 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 277 

active, when currents of warm life run into the hands 
and the feet. I ask not for the great, the remote, 
the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what 
is Greek art or Provenfal minstrelsy; I embrace the 
common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, 
the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may 
have the antique and future worlds. What would we 
really know the meaning of?. The meal in the firkin, 
the milk in the pan, the ballad in the street, the news 
of the boat, the glance of the eye, the form and the 
gait of the body, — show me the ultimate reason of 
these matters; show me the sublime presence of the 
highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, 
in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see 
every trijae bristling with the polarity that ranges it 
instantly on an eternal law; and the shop, the plough, 
and the ledger, referred to the like cause by which 
light undulates and poets sing; — and the world lies 
no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has 
form and order; there is no trifle, there is no puzzle, 
but one design unites and animates the farthest pin- 
nacle and the lowest trench. 

[42] This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith, 
Burns, Cowper, and, in a newer time, of Goethe, 
Wordsworth, and Carlyle. This idea they have dif- 
ferently followed and with various success. In con- 
trast with their writing, the style of Pope, of Johnson, 
of Gibbon, looks cold and pedantic. This writing is 
blood-w^arm. Man is surprised to find that things 
near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things 
remote. The near explains the far. The drop is a 



278 • EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This 
perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in 
discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most 
modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever 
did, the genius of the ancients. 

[43] There is one man of genius who has done much 
for this philosophy of life, whose literary value has 
never yet been rightly estimated; I mean Emanuel 
Swedenborg. The most imaginative of men, yet 
writmg with the precision of a mathematician, he en- 
deavored to engraft a purely philosophical Ethics on 
the popular Christianity of his time. Such an attempt, 
of course, must have difficulty which no genius could 
surmount. But he saw and showed the connection 
between nature and the affections of the soul. He 
pierced the emblematic or spiritual character of the 
visible, audible, tangible world. Especially did his 
shade-loving muse hover over and interpret the lower 
parts of nature; he showed the mysterious bond that 
allies moral e\dl to the foul material forms, and has 
given in epical parables a theory of insanity, of beasts, 
of unclean and fearful things. 

[44] Another sign of our times, also marked by an 
analogous political movement, is the new importance 
given to the single person. Everything that tends 
to insulate the individual — to surround him with 
barriers of natural respect, so that each man shall 
feel the world is his and man shall treat with man as 
a sovereign state with a sovereign state — tends to 
true union as well as greatness. ^^I learned," said 
the melancholy Pestalozzi, *'that no man in God's 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 279 

wide earth is either willing or able to help any other 
man/' Help must come from the bosom alone. The 
scholar is that man who must take up into himself all 
the ability of the time, all the contributions of the 
past, all the hopes of the future. He must be a uni- 
versity of knowledges. If there be one lesson more 
than another which should pierce his ear, it is, The 
world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the 
law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule 
of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Rea- 
son; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all. 
Mr. President and Gentlemen, this confidence in the 
unsearched might of man belongs, by all motives, by 
all prophecy, by all preparation, to the American 
Scholar. We have listened too long to the courtly 
muses of Europe. The spirit of the American free- 
man is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. 
Public and private avarice make the air we breath 
thick and fat. The scholar is decent, indolent, com- 
plaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The 
mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats 
upon itself. There is no work for any but the decorous 
and the complaisant. Young men of the fairest 
promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by 
the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of 
God, find the earth below not in unison with these, 
but are hindered from action by the disgust which the 
principles on which business is managed inspire, and 
turn drudges or die of disgust — some of them suicides. 
What is the remedy? They did not yet see, and thou- 
sands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the 



280 EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

barriers for the career do not yet see, that if the single 
man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and 
there abide, the huge world will come round to him. 
Patience, patience; with the shades of all the good 
and great for company; and for solace, the perspective 
of your own infinite life; and for work, the study and 
the communication of principles, the making those 
instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world. Is 
it not the chief disgrace in the w^orld not to be a unit, 
not to be reckoned one character, not to yield that 
peculiar fruit; which each man was created to bear; 
but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or 
the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we 
belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, 
as the north, or the south? Not so, brothers and 
friends — please God, ours shall not be so. We will 
walk on our own feet; we will work with our own 
hands; we will speak our own minds. The study of 
letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, 
and for sensual indulgence. The dread of man and 
the love of man shall be a wall of defence and a wreath 
of joy around all. A nation of men will for the first 
time exist, because each believes himself inspired by 
the Divine Soul which also inspires all men. 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 281 

QUESTIONS 

(Numbers refer to pages and paragraphs.) 

253: 1. O. W. Holmes calls this address our intellectual Declaration 
of Independence. What sentences in the opening paragraph illustrate 
this? What does Emerson predict for American literature? 

254:4. Is the thought of this paragraph new or familiar to you? 
Explain the last sentence. 

255: 5. What is the difference between the farmer and the Man on 
the farm? 

256:8. "Classification . . . goes on tying things together." 
Give examples of how botany or any other science ties facts together. 

257:9. Why according to Emerson, should one study nature? 

258:11. Emerson defines the writing of books as the transmuting 
of life into truth. Show how the definition applies to this address. 

259: 13. Against what danger does Emerson warn us in this para- 
graph? Would he have you believe unquestioningly all you find in 
his own writings? 

259:15. Select two sentences for quotation. What does Emerson 
say is the right use of books? Name any other use that books have. 

261:18. Explain the statement that all time is abstracted from 
the verse of a great poet. 

266:26. How does action give vocabulary? 

266:27. In what essay does Emerson treat this thought fully? 

267 : 28. What is noticeable about many of the sentences in this 
paragraph? 

268: 31. "They may all be comprised in self-trust." In what other 
essay has Emerson treated this idea fully? 

269:32. "Some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by 
half mankind." Give examples of "dead issues" in pohtics. What 
sentence in this paragraph contains a half-humorous turn of expres- 
sion? 

272:35. "Men are become of no account." Compared to what? 
Is this true? 

277:42. What is the idea that inspired Goldsmith and Burns? 
What writers of to-day find inspiration in the same source? 

278 : 44. At what point in this paragraph does the conclusion or 
peroration begin? 

This address exhibits a far more regular structure than the essays. 
Make an outline of it, and compare its structure, as so shown, with 
that of one of the essays. 



NOTES 

(The numbers In heavy type refer to pages, the others to para- 
graphs.) 

COMPENSATION 

This was first published in the Essays, First Series. Parts of it 
had been ah'eady given in a lecture on "Duty." 

25, 4. convicting the world, i.e. of its error in its estimate of 
success. 

25, 7. Polarity. The condition of having two opposite poles ; 
hence containing qualities opposed to each other. 

28, 12, Res nolunt, etc. A Latin proverb, translated in the 
preceding sentence. 

30, 15. "It is in the world," etc. From John i: 10. 

30, 15. The dice of God, etc. A Greek proverb. 

32, 19. "Drive out nature," etc. Quoted from the Latin poet 
Horace. 

33, 20. "How secret art thou," etc. From St. Augustine's Con- 
fessions, Bk. I, 18. 

33, 21. Prometheus knows one secret. It was predicted that 
Jupiter would be overthrown, and Prometheus alone knew the means 
of averting his downfall. To gain the secret, Jupiter offered to 
release Prometheus from the rock to which he was bound. The 
secret known by Minerva is explained in the quotation. 

33, 21. "Of all the gods," etc. From the Prometheus of 
^schylus, a famous Greek tragic poet. 

33, 21. Aurora. A goddess who, loving Tithonus, a mortal, 
asked Jove to make him immortal. He did so, but she had forgotten 
to ask that her lover might remain young, so he soon wished for 
death. See Tennyson's poem, "Tithonus." 

34, 21. Achilles, in Greek legend, was dipped into the river 
Styx to make him invulnerable, but the water did not touch his 
heel, and here he received his death-wound. 

34, 21. Nibelungen. The ancient epic poem of Germany, of 
which Siegfried is the hero. 

34, 22. Nemesis. The Greek goddess of retribution. 

35, 23. Phidias. A famous sculptor of ancient Greece. 

38, 30. That obscene "bird. Obscene is here used in its earlier 
meaning of ill-omened. 

38, 31. Poly crates. An ancient Greek, ruler of Samos, who was 

283 



284 NOTES [Pp. 38- 

so favored by fortune that a friend advised him, in order to prevent 
the fate sure to follow unbroken prosperity, to sacrifice whatever was 
most dear to him. Accordingly he threw into the sea a ring contain- 
ing an emerald of great value. The next day the ring was found in 
a fish served at his table. Not long afterwards Polycrates was over- 
come in battle, captured, and crucified. 

38, 32. scot and lot. An old term for parish or borough taxes: 
here used to signify all one's obligations. 

39, 33. worm worms. Breed worms. 

41, 37. armies sent against Napoleon. Upon Napoleon's 
return to France, after his escape from Elba, the royal armies sent 
against him joined his followers. 

41, 37. "Winds blow and waters roll." From Wordsworth's 
sonnet, "Near Dover, September, 1802." 

48, 48. As the shell fish, etc. For an expression of this thought 
in poetry, see O. W. Holmes's "The Chambered Nautilus." 

GIFTS 

Tl;iis essay was first published in the Dial, and appeared later in 
the Essays, Second Series. 

53, 2. Furies. In Greek mythology those who punished wrong- 
doers by lashing them with whips. 

54, 3. "Brother, if Jove," etc. From Hesiod's Works and 
Days, 11. 85-88. 

55, 4. Timons. Timon of Athens, in Shakspere's play of that 
name, gives away his wealth in prodigal fashion. When reduced to 
poverty, he asks help of those whom he has made rich, but they 
refuse him. He then becomes bitter towards all mankind. 

SELF-RELIANCE 

First published in the Essays, First Series. Part of the essay is 
taken from a lecture on "Individualism," other passages from lectures 
on "Genius," "Duty," etc. in a course delivered in 1838-9, and from 
the Journal. 

58. Ne te qusesiveris extra. (Lat.) Do not seek beyond 
thyself. 

58, 1. an eminent painter. It is not known who is meant. 
Michael Angelo, William Blake and Washington AUston have been 
suggested. Perhaps Blake's poems best answer the description. 

61, 5. spoken with eclat. Emerson's action in resigning his 
pastorate, and an address delivered at the Divinity School in Cam- 
bridge, drew upon him public attention in a way he disliked. 

61, 5. Lethe. A river whose waters caused one to forget past 
sorrows. 



-SI] NOTES 285 

63, 7. Barbadoes. The inhabitants of Barbadoes were at this 
time slaves. 

68, 14. Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher, was banished by the 
people; Socrates, the wisest man in Greece, was accused by his 
enemies of teaching doctrines harmful to the state, and was 
unjustly sentenced to death. Copernicus, an astronomer, first 
established the theory that the sun was the center of the solar system; 
for fear of persecution he did not publish his discovery for years. 
Galileo, an Italian astronomer, was imprisoned for announcing his 
discoveries. 

69, 15. Alexandrian stanza. A line of twelve syllables. Em- 
erson probably meant, not the Alexandrian or Alexandrine stanza 
but the palindrome, which reads the same spelled backward or for- 
ward; as, "Madam, I'm Adam.'' 

69, 15. this pleasing contrite wood-life. In his Journal Em- 
erson wrote shortly before this time: "All my thoughts are foresters. 
I have scarce a day-dream on which the breath of the pines has not 
blown and their shadows waved. Shall I not therefore call my little 
book Forest Essays?" 

70, 16. Chatham. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-1778), 
a great English statesman and orator, is described in Macaulay's 
essay of that title. 

70, 17. Spartan file. The Spartans were noted for courage and 
haughty spirit. The fife was their signal for battle. 

71, 17. Clarkson Thomas (1760-1846), an English philanthro- 
pist, was one of the first who protested against slavery in British 
colonies. 

72, 18. That popular fable. The story of "Abou Hassan or 
The Sleeper Awakened" in the Arabian Nights is one version of 
this. It is also found in the Induction to Shakspere's Taming of 
the Shrew. 

72, 19. Scanderbeg. An Albanian leader who in the fifteenth 
century successfully defended his country against Turkey. 

72, 19. Gustavus. Gustavus Adolphus II. of Sweden, victorious 
over Russia and other powers in the Thirty Years' War. 

73, 21. parallax. Referring to the method of calculating the 
distance of the stars. A star without parallax would be so remote 
that its distance could not be calculated. 

74, 21. fatal. Here used in the sense of inevitable, as we speak of 
a thing as fated to occur. 

80, 30. Thor and Woden. Gods of the Saxons, from whose 
names we get Thursday and Wednesday. Thor, or the Thunderer, 
corresponded to Jupiter in the Roman mythology. See Guerber's 
Myths of Northern Lands. 

81, 31. Antlnomlanlsm. The doctrine that one may be saved 
by faith, regardless of his disobedience of the moral law. 



286 NOTES [Pp. 83- 

83, 34. Stole* A school of Greek philosophers who taught men 
to bear good or ill fortune with equal calmness, as things ordained 
by necessity, and which could not really touch the mind. 

85, 37. Zoroaster. The founder of the ancient religion of Persia. 

85, 38. those foolish Israelites. See Exodus xx: 19. 

85, 38. Locke and Bentham were English philosophers; Lavoi- 
sier was a French chemist, who discovered the composition of water; 
Hutton, a Scotch geologist; Spurzheim, a German phrenologist. 
The references to science recall Emerson's early lectures on this 
subject. See Introduction. 

88, 42. Doric. A simple style of Greek architecture. Gothic 
was a more elaborate style, developed in Europe in the middle ages, 
characterized by high, pointed arches, as seen in English cathedrals. 

88,43. Scipio. A famous Roman general (b. c. 234-183), who 
completed the conquest of Spain and defeated Hannibal at Zama. 

90, 47. Plutarch's heroes. Plutarch, a Greek historian, wrote 
a series of lives of illustrious Greeks and Romans. The names 
following in the text are those of great statesmen and philosophers 
of whom he wrote. 

91, 47. Bering or Behring, a Danish navigator, discovered the 
strait which bears his name; Sir Williain Edward Parry was an Eng- 
lish navigator, leader of four arctic expeditions ; Sir John Franklin 
another explorer, was lost in the arctic regions in 1846. 



MANNERS 

This was given as a lecture in a course in Boston in 1841-2. It was 
first published in the Essays, Second Series. 

97, 1. Borgoo, or Borku. A group of oases in the Sahara 
desert. 

97, 2. Sir Philip Sidney. The reference is to his Arcadia, one 
of the earliest English romances. 

101, 4. Sapor. A Persian king who defeated the Roman em- 
peror Qmstantius, a. d. 348. The Cid, the national hero of Spain, 
lived in the eleventh century. His victories over the Moors are told 
in the Chronicle of the Cid, translated into Englishjby Robert Southey. 
It was a favorite book of Emerson's, and he used to read it to his 
children. Pericles was a famous Athenian statesman and general. 
He caused the Parthenon to be built, and was commander in the 
Peloponnesian War. 

103, 7. Faubourg St. Germain. A quarter of Paris, formerly the 
residence of the nobility. 

105, 8. tournure. (Fr.) Figure; here in the sense of style. 

106, 9. Coventry. To send to Coventry means to exclude from 
companionship. The origin of the phrase is unknown. 



-135] NOTES 287 

107, 9. Vich Ian Vohr. A character in Scott's Waverley. Tail 
signifies the train of followers of a chieftain, hence "with his tall 
on," means at the head of his clan. 

108, 11. Amphitryon. A hero of Greek legend. Jupiter once 
assumed the form of Amphitryon to woo Alcmene. At a banquet 
given to her, the real Amphitryon appeared; hence the word is a 
synonym for host. The story is treated in a Latin comedy by Plautus 
and a French comedy by Moliere. 

108, 11. Escurlal. A Spanish royal palace near Madrid, famous 
for its library and art gallery. 

108, 11. rencontre. (Fr.) Meeting. 

115, 17. Circe. An enchantress who turned men into swine by 
a magic potion. "Horned company" is perhaps a slip of Emerson's. 
The story of Circe is told in Homer's Odyssey. 

117, 18. Phllhellene. A lover of the Greeks, who would aid 
them in their struggle for independence, as Byron did. 

118, 18. "As Heaven and Earth," etc. Keats's Hyperion, 
Bk. II, 1. 206 ff. 

120, 20. Minerva and Juno were Greek goddesses; Polymnla 
one of the nine Muses. All have been favorite subjects for painters 
and sculptors. 

122, 21. Byzantine. A style of architecture characterized by 
the use of mosaics, often brilliantly colored. The church of St. 
Mark's at Venice is an example. 

123, 22. Osman is Emerson's name for the ideal man. 

124, 23. The fable is Emerson's invention. 



FRIENDSHIP 

First published in the Essays, First Series. Parts of it were taken 
from lectures on *'The Heart" and "Private Life." 

128, 5. My friends have come to me unsought. This 
thought has been beautifully expressed by John Burroughs in the 
poem ''Waiting," given in Stedman's American Anthology. 

129, 5. Apollo. A Greek god, patron of music and poetry. 
129, 6. "crush the sweet poison," From Milton's Comus, 1. 47. 
133, 9. "The valiant warrior," From Shakspere, Sonnet XXV. 

133, 10. naturlangsamkelt. (Ger.) Slow working of nature. 

134, 12. Olympian. The reference is to the Olympian games of 
ancient Greece, where famous athletes contested for crowns of wild 
olive. These games were revived at Athens in 1896, when contestants 
from other countries took part. 

135, 12. I knew a man. It was Jones Very, of Salem, a poet 
and mystic. In a letter Emerson says: "Very has been here lately 



288 NOTES [Pp. 136- 

and stayed a few days, confounding us all with the question whether 
he was insane. At first sight and speech you would certainly pro- 
nounce him so. Talk with him a few hours, and you will think all 
insane but he." 

136, 13. my author. Montaigne, Bk. I, ch. XXXIX. 

142, 18. In these warm lines the heart, etc. The same 
thought is thus expressed by Emerson in verse: 

•'The tongue is prone to lose the way; 
Not so the pen, for in a letter 
We have not better things to say 
But surely say them better. 

— Fragments on Life. 

142, 19. Crimen quos, etc. (Lat.) Crime makes equals of 
those whom it pollutes. 

143, 20. Consuetudes. Customs. 

144, 22. Janus-faced. Janus, a Roman god, was represented 
with two faces, looking east and west. 

HEROISM 

First published in the Essays, First Series. A lecture with this 
title was given in a course in Boston in 1837-8, and probably con- 
tained much of the present essay. 

148, 1. Sophocles. Not the title of a play, but the name of 
a character in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Triumph of Honor. 

150, 2. the sound of any fife. Fifes and drums are used to 
fire the courage of soldiers; flutes and flageolets make a softer music, 
fitter for pleasure. 

150, 2. portrait of Evandale. "Lord Evandale is a Malignant, 
of heart like flint and brow like adamant; the goods of the world fall 
on him like leaves on the frost-bound earth, and unmoved he will 
see them whirled off by the first wind." (Scott, Old Mortality, ch. 
XLIII.) 

151, 2. Plutarch. See note on Self -Reliance, par. 47. 

154, 7. "Indeed, these humble considerations.** From Shak- 
spere's Henry IV, Part II, Act ii, Sc. 2. 

156, 11. Prytaneum, a public building in Athens where foreign 
ambassadors or distinguished citizens were lodged as the guests of 
the state. 

158, 12. Epaminondas, a famous Greek general and states- 
man, received his death-wound at the battle of Mantinea, where he 
was victorious. 

159, 13. Colossus. A lighthouse in the form of a gigantic statue, 
at the entrance to the harbor of Rhodes. 

159,13. Sappho, Sevigne, De Stael — three famous women of 



-173] NOTES 289 

letters, the first a poet of ancient Greece, the others Frenchwomen of 
the eighteenth century. 

159, 13. Themis. A Greek goddess, the personification of law, 
order, and abstract right. 

160, 14. **Always do what you are afraid to do.'* This advice 
was given to Emerson by his aunt. Miss Mary Moody Emerson, a 
woman of uncommon intellect and character, who exerted great 
influence upon her nephews. 

161, 17. Lovejoy. Elijah P. Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister, 
was one of the pioneers in the anti-slavery movement. He published 
a paper in St. Louis, but was driven from the city. He tried again 
in Alton, Illinois, but a mob three times broke into his office and 
destroyed his press. A fourth press arrived, and on the night of 
November 7, 1837, a mob besieged his office, set the building on fire, 
and shot him dead. It was this event that led Wendell Pliillips to 
join the anti-slavery party. 

162, 19. "Let them rave." Slightly altered from Tennyson's 
"A Dirge." 

CHARACTER 

Part of this essay was dehvered as a lecture in the winter of 1841-2. 
It was first published in the Essays, Second Series. 

164, 1. brilliant English historian. Thomas Carlyle. See 
Introduction, for the friendship between Carlyle and Emerson. 

164, 1. Plutarch. See note to Self -Reliance, par. 47. 

165, 1. lole. In Greek legend, the daughter of King Eurytus. 
Hercules slew her father and carried her off as a captive. 

167, 3. the natural merchant. From a note in Emerson's 
Journal, we know that he had in mind Mr. Abel Adams, a successful 
Boston merchant, and a member of Emerson's congregation. 

168, 4. Wife of Concini. Leonora, wife of Concini, Marquis 
d'Ancre, was burned as a sorceress, being accused of having exerted 
supernatural power over Mary of Medici, queen of Henry IV. 

168, 4. Toussaint L'Ouverture. A negro slave, born on the 
island of Hayti in 1743. He led his people in a revolution, overthrew 
French rule, and established a government. Napoleon sent an army 
against him; he surrendered and was pardoned, but perished in a 
French prison. Wendell PhiUips, in hisfamious oration on Toussaint. 
says that his military genius was greater than Napoleon's, and that 
as a leader of his people he ranks with Washington. 

171, 6. Hecate. A Greek goddess worshipped by sorcerers and 
witches; she appears in Macbeth, Act iii, Sc. 5. 

171, 6. Euminides. In Greek mythology the divinities who 
punished evil-doers; also known as the Fates, and the Furies. 

173; 7. fountains. Men of original force. 



290 NOTES [Pp. ITS- 

ITS, 8. Xenophon. A famous Greek writer and warrior. After 
the battle of Cunaxa (401 b. c.) he led the Greek army northward 
through hostile territory to the Black Sea in safety. 

174, 8. An amiaMe and accomplished person. Mr. George 
Ripley, the head of the Brook Farm Community. See Lindsay 
Swift's Brook Farm. 

177, 13. .ffischyius. The most famous dramatist of Greek liter- 
ature. 

177, 13. Patmos. An island in the Mediterranean, where John 
in exile wrote the book of Revelation. ' 

179, 15. Magian. A priest of the ancient Persian religion, 
founded by Zoroaster, or Zarathushtra. 

180, 15. fasces. A bundle of rods enclosing an ax, the emblem 
of a Roman magistrate, signifying his power of inflicting either 
slight punishment or the death penalty. 

181, 16. furniture. That with which a man is furnished by 
nature, his capabilities, etc. 

182, 17. "The gods are to each other," etc. From Homer's 
Odyssey, Bk. V, 99. 

182, 17. "When each the other." From Emerson's poem, 
"Initial Daemonic and Celestial Love." 

183, 19. Tyburn. The public gallows in London was long known 
as Tyburn Tree. 

POLITICS 

First published in the Essays, Second Series. Part of it was de- 
livered as a lecture in a course given in 1839-40. 

187, 1. Pisistratus. A tyrant of Athens, who usurped the 
supreme power in 560 b. c. 

189, 2. Laban. See Genesis ch. xxix and xxx. 

200, 16. Malthus and Ricardo were noted writers on Political 
Economy. The Annual Register was a record of English pohtical 
history. The Conversations-Lexicon was a German encyclopedia. 

NATURE 

First published in the Essays, Second Series. The matter is taken 
partly from Emerson's Journal, partlj' from earlier lectures. The 
subject was a favorite one with Emerson; it was the theme of his 
first book. 

Uriel. One of the seven archangels. 

houstonia. A wild flower, better known as bluets. 

villeggiatura. (ItaL) Retirement into the country. 

Versailles. A royal palace of Louis XIV., famous for 



207, 


2. 


208, 


3. 


208, 


3. 


209, 


3. 


its gardens. 



-225] NOTES 291 

209, 3. Paphos. A city of Cyprus containing a famous temple 
of Venus. 

209, 3. Ctesiphon. An ancient city of Mesopotamia, contain- 
ing the ruins of a great palace. 

210, 3. Dorian, of ancient Greece. Apollo, god of music, and 
Diana, goddess of tlie cliase, were represented as young and beautiful. 

210, 4. Tempe. A valley in Greece, celebrated for the beauty 
of its scenery. 

211, 4. Campagna. The plain surrounding the city of Rome, 
containing the ruins of many ancient palaces. 

211, 5. "Wreaths" and ^'Flora's Chaplets.'* Common names 
for old-fashioned holiday books, or annuals. They contained a mis- 
cellany of prose and verse, illustrated with steel engravings, and 
bound in gilded covers. 

212, 5. Pan. A Greek nature deity. 

213, 6. Ptolemaic. Ptolemy, an Egyptian astronomer of the 
second century a. d., put forth the theory that the sun and the planets 
revolved about the earth. This theory prevailed for fifteen hundred 
years, until it was displaced by the theory of Copernicus, our modern 
belief. 

214, 6. Flora, goddess of flowers; Fauna, goddess of agricul- 
ture; Ceres, goddess of grains; Pomona, goddess of fruit trees. 

216, 9. benefic. Beneficial. 

217, 10. Franklin's experiment showed the identity of electricity 
and lightning; John Dalton, an English chemist, propounded the 
atomic theory; Sir Humphrey Davy invented the safety-lamp used 
by miners; Joseph Black was a noted Scotch chemist. The names 
suggest Emerson's early interest in science. 

220, 12. Jacob Behmen, a famous German mystic and religious 
writer whose works Emerson read with interest ; George Fox, founder 
of the Society of Friends; James Naylor, a Puritan of Cromwell's 
time who believed himself to be a reincarnation of Christ 

224, 15. tickled trout. It is said that if one places his fingers 
underneath a trout and tickles it gently, the fish will allow itself to 
be lifted from the water. 

224, 15. OSdipus. In Greek legend, the one who guessed the 
riddle of the Sphinx. 

225, IC). prunella. Self-heal, or sicklewort, a plant supposed to 
have medicinal powers. It grows all over the world except in Africa. 

SHAKSPERE 

This essay was published in 1850, in the volume entitled Repre- 
sentative Men. This book was based upon a course of lectures deliv- 
ered in 1845. It contained an introductory discourse upon "The 
Uses of Great Men," followed by essays on "Plato, or the Philosopher"; 



292 NOTES [Pp. 230- 

"Swedenborg, or the Mystic"; "Montaigne, or the Skeptic"; "Shak- 
spere, or the Poet"; "Napoleon, or the Man of the World"; "Goethe, 
or the Writer." It is apparent that Shakspere is treated as a type 
representing poets in general, 

230, 3. Kyd, Marlowe, and others, noted dramatists of the 
time of Shakspere. The most famous are Christopher Marlowe, 

author of The Jew of Malta, from which Shakspere probably drew 
suggestions for his Merchant of Venice; and Ben Jonson, author of 
Every Man in His Humour. 

231, 4. Plutarch. See note to Compensation, par. 47. 

231, 4. Brut. The title of a half-legendary history of England. 
It tells of King Arthur and his Round Table. 

232, 6. Malone, Edmund. A Shaksperian scholar, who pub- 
lished an edition of the plays with critical notes and introductions. 

234, 7. Saadl. An ancient Persian poet. His chief work, the 
Gulistan, wsls published in English with a preface by Emerson. 

234, 7. "Presenting Thebes* and Pelops' line.'* From Milton, 
II Penseroso, 11. 99-100. 

235, 7. Boccaccio. A famous Italian novelist and poet, con- 
temporary with Chaucer. From his Philostrato Chaucer drew his Troilus 
and Cressida, not from Lollius. 

235, 7. Provengal. Provence, an old province of southeastern 
France, famous as the home of early French poets called Troubadours . 
Their work influenced later poets in France, Italy, and England. 

235, 8. Westminster. A district of London in which the Houses 
of Parliament are situated. 

236, 8. Menu, or Manu. The legendary law-giver of India, 
author of the Vedas, or sacred books, in the Sanskrit language. 

236, 8. Delphi. The seat of the oracle of Apollo, in Greece, to 
which people went to inquire of the future. 

237, 9. Pilpay, or Bidpai. A book of fables, originally wTitten 
in Sanskrit, and translated mto many languages. La Fontaine drew 
many of his Fables frorh this source. 

237, 9. Cid. See note to Manners, par. 4. 

237, 10. Ferrex and Porrex, or Gorhuduc, by Sackville and 
Norton, is the earliest regular English tragedy. Gammer Gurton's 
Needle, by Still, is one of the earliest English comedies. 

240, 12. Coleridge and Goethe. Coleridge's criticism on Ham- 
let is in his Lectures and Notes on Shakspere; Goethe's in Wilhelm 
Meister. 

241, 14. Betterton, Garrick, etc. Famous actors in Shaksperian 
parts. 

242, 14. sacristan. An old name for sexton, the officer having 
charge of the valuables and records of the church. 

242, 14. Phidian. See note on Compensation, par. 23. 

243, 15. tripod. A seat having three feet. At the oracle of 



-278] NOTES 293 

Delphi, the priestesses gave their responses when seated upon the 
sacred tripod. See illustration in Century Dictionary. 

244, 16. Sonnets. Shakspere's sonnets tell the story of a man's 
affection for a friend and for a woman, and of the conflict in his mind 
at learning that his friend has supplanted him in his love. It has 
been suggested that the sonnets are autobiographical. 

244, 16. Timon, in Timon of Athens; Warwick, in King Henry 
VI. Antonio, in The Merchant of Venice. Talma. A famous 
French actor, friend of Napoleon. 

247, 20. Daguerre. A French painter, one of the inventors of 
photography. The earliest pictures were known as daguerreotypes; 
the tin-type is the modern representative. 

251, 26. profane. Worldly. 

251, 27. Israelite, German, and Swede. The reference is prob- 
ably to Moses, Luther, and Swedenborg. See note to p. 278, par. 43. 

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 

An address delivered August 31, 1837, before the Phi Beta Kappa 
Society of Harvard College. This society is made up of the men of 
highest rank in each senior class; its membership includes many of 
the most distinguished men of our time, and an invitation to address 
it is regarded as an honor. Of this address James Russell Lowell 
said: "Its delivery was an event without any former parallel in our 
literary annals, a scene to be always treasured in the memory for its 
picturesqueness and its inspiration. What crowded and breathless 
aisles, what windows clustering with eager heads, what enthusiasm 
of approval, what grim silence of foregone dissent!" 

252, 1. Troubadours. Wandering poets of southern France 
and Italy. At the castles they would recite their poems, and debate 
on questions of love and gaUantry. 

259, 14. Third Estate. In European countries, a nation was 
formerly regarded as comprising three elements, or estates: the nobles, 
the clergy, and the commons. 

265, 25. Savoyards. People of Savoy, a district of France. 

267, 28. unhandselled. Uncultivated. 

2.68, 28. Druids. Ancient British priests who offered human 
sacrifices. Berserkirs, a Scandinavian term for men mad for battle. 
Alfred, called The Great, a Saxon king who drove back the Danish 
invaders, established laws, and advanced the civilization of his people. 

276, 41. the same movement. The French Revolution. 

278, 43. Swedenborg. A Swedish theologian, founder of the 
sect which bears his name. 



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